CHAPTER 13 — THE ELEVEN MINUTES
Mrs. Collins joined us that evening.
She was older than I remembered, but her voice was the same gentle voice that had once calmed Maya during Sarah’s treatments.
“I’m sorry I disappeared,” she said.
“Everyone says that after deciding my family didn’t deserve the truth.”
She accepted the anger.
“Sarah woke at 1:43 a.m.”
“But she had already been declared dead.”
“The attending physician pronounced her at 1:36. Her heart restarted seven minutes later.”
“Why wasn’t I called?”
“Gavin had ordered staff to remove all phones from the room.”
“On whose authority?”
“Charles’s private medical directive.”
Mrs. Collins explained that Sarah regained consciousness briefly.
She could not survive.
But she was alert enough to understand what had happened.
Margaret entered through a service corridor.
Mrs. Collins used a portable recorder.
Sarah spoke for four minutes.
“Where is that recording?”
Margaret looked at Mrs. Collins.
Neither answered.
“Where?”
“Gavin took the original,” Mrs. Collins said.
“Then how do you know what she said?”
“I made a second recording.”
She placed an old cassette player on the table.
Sarah’s voice was weak.
“Margaret, tell Richard I was wrong about him.”
I closed my eyes.
“He didn’t know,” she continued. “Charles made me believe he chose the company.”
Her breathing became rough.
Then she spoke about Eleanor.
“She is angry, but she is not beyond saving. Gavin is feeding that anger.”
Sarah asked Margaret to protect Maya.
Then she revealed the darkest family secret.
Sterling Global’s early pharmaceutical division had conducted illegal fertility research on women receiving discounted treatment.
Eggs and embryos were stored without informed consent.
Medical data was sold.
The fortune that later funded Sterling Global’s expansion had begun with that program.
My father knew.
Beatrice knew portions.
Margaret had discovered it and tried to expose it.
Sarah’s embryo substitution was not an isolated crime.
It was part of a system.
Near the end, Sarah said:
“Richard will try to save the company. Don’t let him. Make him save the people instead.”
The recording stopped.
I sat in silence.
All my life, I had been proud of building on my family’s legacy.
Now I understood what that legacy had been built on.
Mrs. Collins turned the cassette over.
“There is more.”
The second side contained another voice.
A man entered Sarah’s room after Margaret left.
Gavin.
“You should have stayed quiet,” he told Sarah.
She answered weakly.
“You won’t get Maya.”
“You misunderstand. I don’t want the child.”
“Eleanor does.”
“Eleanor wants what I tell her to want.”
There was a pause.
Then Gavin said:
“Once Charles is gone, Richard will fall. Eleanor will control Maya’s shares. I will control Eleanor.”
I looked at Margaret.
“Eleanor was never his partner.”
“No,” she said. “She was another tool.”
The recording continued.
Sarah asked one final question.
“Does Eleanor know who her father really is?”
Gavin laughed.
“She knows Charles is her father.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
The tape clicked.
May you like
Then Sarah whispered:
“Tell her Charles is not her biological father.”
