Bloodline of Retribution: The Disowned Prodigy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Birthday Toast
Lena stands at her own birthday dinner, proves she is not Adelaide's daughter, refuses the wine and walks out, then learns she is still the Kincaid bride.
I stood up at my own birthday dinner and tapped my glass with a fork.
Sixty guests turned toward me down the long table in Adelaide's townhouse.
The soup was already set in front of my place. The wine was already poured.
The last time I sat in this chair, I drank that wine.
I was dead before the cake.
This morning I had woken up in my own bed with the sun on the wall, and it was my birthday again.
I didn't know why. I only knew I wasn't going to waste it.
"Lena, sweetheart." Adelaide smiled at me from the head of the table. "Sit down. You've been working yourself to the bone. Nobody needs a speech."
She said it kindly. She had always said everything kindly.
The seat on her left had no place card. I had noticed it when I walked in.
"That chair is for a late guest," she'd told me, and squeezed my hand.
I didn't sit.
"I have one thing to say before we eat," I said.
"I'm twenty-five today, and I'm not Adelaide Ashgrove's daughter."
Nobody laughed. A fork rang against a plate and stopped.
"Darling, you're tired," Adelaide said. "Someone get her some water."
"I took this from your study at six this morning." I held up the folded pages.
"It's from your kidney specialist. You were tested last spring, and so was I."
Adelaide's smile stayed where it was.
I read the line out loud. "Donor screening, daughter, Lena Ashgrove: biological parentage excluded."
The foundation's treasurer put down his glass.
"A lab error," Adelaide said. "I'll ring the clinic tomorrow."
"There's a second page." I turned it over.
"St. Brendan's, twenty-five years ago. Two babies born an hour apart on the night the power failed."
"The wristbands were put on in the dark."
My voice was steady. I was surprised by that.
"The other baby went home to a family named Donnelly in Bridgeport. I went home with you."
A woman near the middle of the table whispered something, and her husband hushed her.
Adelaide set her napkin down and folded it into a square.
"The hospital was sloppy," she said. "These things are sad, and they are private. We will discuss it as a family."
"We are discussing it as a family," I said. "There are sixty of us."
I picked up my wine glass.
Everyone watched me lift it. Adelaide watched it the longest.
I poured it out onto the white tablecloth and watched the red spread toward the soup.
"Lena," she said, and now her voice was lower. "Put that down."
"No."
I set the empty glass on its side. Then I turned to the foundation's treasurer, who had been looking at his hands.
"Every paper I wrote in the Ashgrove lab has Adelaide's fund on the front and my work inside."
"I'll be asking for it back."
Adelaide stood.
The smile was gone, and without it her face was thinner than I remembered.
"You ungrateful girl," she said, loud enough for every guest. "I fed you. I put you through school. You were never anything but borrowed."
"I know. I'm leaving."
"Then leave. You are no daughter of mine, and you will never sign my name again."
"Fine."
"But you do not leave your contract." She said it softly and leaned toward me over the ruined tablecloth.
"You pricked your thumb on the Kincaid papers at eighteen. Blood doesn't care who your mother was."
The room had gone quiet in a new way.
"Keir Kincaid can't stand up to come and collect you, darling. His men can."
Somebody at the back said the name Kincaid, very low.
I had read those papers as a trust agreement.
I had signed where she pointed, and she had held my hand still while the needle went in.
I had not thought about them since.
I looked at Adelaide, then at the empty chair on her left.
I had done what I came to do.
So I walked out.
I didn't take my coat from the maid.
I didn't look back at the long table or the guests with their phones lifted.
I took the report and my keys and nothing else.
The cold on Lake Shore Drive hit my bare arms. A black car sat at the curb with its engine running.
A man in a dark overcoat stepped out of the driver's side and opened the back door.
"Miss Ashgrove."
"It's Donnelly," I said. "As of ten minutes ago."
"Miss Donnelly." He didn't smile. "Mr. Kincaid asked me to tell you one thing before you decide."
The wind pushed my hair across my face.
"Ken Donnelly's mortgage in Bridgeport changed hands at five o'clock this afternoon," the driver said.
"It belongs to Mr. Kincaid now. Your signature came with it."
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