Chapter 10 - The secret was not paternity—it was leverage
The central scheme began nine months earlier.
Sabine knew I was emotionally protective of Ellie.
Everyone did.
She also knew Camille had used fertility treatment because that much had once been mentioned publicly during a charity interview.
Sabine apparently became curious.
Or suspicious.
She asked her assistant:
“Was Ellie IVF?”
The assistant said she thought so.
Then Melissa Crane, who was temporarily working inside Westbrook’s digitization project, searched Camille’s old record.
Unauthorized.
She found:
Donor conception.
Donor code.
Then the cross-reference to:
Nathaniel Reed.
Melissa photographed the screens.
Sent them to her sister.
Her sister sent them to Sabine.
Messages later recovered showed Sabine immediately understood the information differently.
Not as gossip.
As negotiating leverage.
She wrote:
Donovan has built his whole succession structure around Ellie. If she isn’t biologically his, this changes everything.
That assumption was wrong.
But important.
My family investment structure included trusts using terms such as:
Descendant.
Issue.
Child.
Lineal beneficiary.
Sabine believed genetic parentage might exclude Ellie from future interests.
If that were true, exposing donor conception could create:
Family conflict.
Trust litigation.
Pressure on me.
Potentially weaken my position in the Laurent deal.
She commissioned a private trust lawyer to analyze hypothetical language.
The lawyer—unaware the records had been stolen—responded:
Legal parentage and specific trust definitions control. Donor conception does not automatically exclude a child. Review governing instruments.
Sabine did not have those instruments.
So she guessed.
Then she went further.
She prepared what investigators later called a:
Leverage File.
It contained:
Clinic screenshots.
Nathaniel Reed’s public biography.
My family trust genealogy chart.
Press clippings describing Ellie as my “only heir.”
Notes on relatives who might object.
Potential media contacts.
And one line:
Use only if D blocks control provisions.
There it was.
She never wanted to help Ellie discover her origins.
She wanted to threaten a family dispute if I refused her preferred terms in the yacht joint venture.
May you like
The “real father” threat was not about truth.
It was a business weapon.
