Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Embryo
Tabby's pregnancy test is positive, and the clinic director says the embryo isn't hers, offers a quarter million and a same-day procedure, and she refuses in front of the waiting room. A black car waits at the curb.
The nurse at Lakeshore Fertility said the word "positive" and I cried so hard she had to hand me the whole tissue box.
Six months ago I had spent thirty-one thousand dollars, every cent I owned, on one frozen embryo.
The lab had told me it was the only one that survived.
My mother died of ovarian cancer when I was twenty-two.
My own blood test said the same gene was waiting in me, and the doctors wanted my ovaries out by thirty.
I am twenty-eight.
That embryo was the only baby I would ever make with my own body.
So I sat in the pink exam chair and sobbed into a tissue and laughed at myself.
"Give me one minute," I told the nurse. "I'm calling my friend."
She did not smile back.
She looked at the folder in her hands, and then she looked at the door.
"The medical director would like to see you first," she said.
The medical director's office had a glass wall and a view of the lake.
He stood up when I came in, which doctors never do.
He was fifty-five and smooth, with silver hair and a very expensive pen.
"Ms. Fitzgerald, please sit. I'll be direct, because you deserve that."
I sat.
"There was an error in our lab."
My heart did something slow and heavy in my chest.
"What kind of error?"
"The embryo we transferred into you on November third was not yours."
I heard the words, but they would not line up into a meaning.
"That's not possible," I said. "I signed for it. I watched the screen."
"It was a labeling error between two storage canes," he said. "It is rare, and it is deeply regrettable."
"Whose is it?"
"I'm not able to disclose that."
"Where is mine?"
He folded his hands.
"We are still investigating."
I stared at him.
"I'm pregnant," I said. "Right now. With somebody's baby."
"Yes."
He slid a folder across the glass desk, and on top of it lay a cashier's check.
It was made out to me for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Under it was a form with a yellow tab on the signature line.
"Today, we can arrange a same-day procedure with our own surgeon," he said.
He used the kindest voice I have ever heard from a man.
"You would sign a confidentiality agreement and the funds are yours. No one ever needs to know this happened."
I looked at the check.
I thought of my father's pension, and my mother's hospital bills, and the salon rent I could never cover.
It was more money than anyone in my family had ever touched.
"You want me to end it," I said.
"I want to make you whole."
"You lost my baby."
"We lost an embryo, Ms. Fitzgerald."
Something inside me went completely quiet.
He glanced at his phone, and in that second, I read the label on the folder, upside down.
The tab said RUVOLO, C. / O.
I did not know the name.
I did know that no one pays a quarter of a million dollars to hide a small mistake.
He flinched when he turned the folder face down.
"I need to think about it," I said.
"I'm afraid that isn't possible," he said. "The procedure must happen before the end of the day."
"Why?"
He did not answer.
I stood up, and I picked up the folder, and I put the check back down on his desk.
"Ms. Fitzgerald."
"No."
"You are not thinking clearly."
"I'm thinking more clearly than I have in six months."
I walked out through the glass door and into the waiting room.
A dozen women sat there with their purses on their knees, all of them hoping for the same news I had just been given.
The director followed me to the doorway.
"Please don't make this difficult," he said, much too quietly.
So I held up the signature form where all of them could see it.
"This clinic put the wrong baby in me," I said. "They want me to sign this and make it disappear."
Every head came up.
I tore the form in half, and then in quarters, and dropped it in the wastebasket by the front desk.
Nobody in that room said a word.
I took my file and my coat and I went down in the elevator with my hand flat against my stomach.
Outside it was sleeting.
A black car idled at the curb with its back door already open.
A huge bald man in a green parka stood beside it, holding a paper bag of mints.
"Ms. Fitzgerald," he said. "Mr. Ruvolo would like a word with you."
I went cold from my scalp to my shoes.
"Mr. Ruvolo," I said. "Is that C. or O.?"
He looked at the clinic doors behind me, then back at my face.
"O.," he said. "And for what it's worth, miss, he's more scared than you are."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend