Mark had hidden it from Sarah. He’d convinced her that Ethan was alive and enrolled in a secret experimental program, using old photographs, false messages, and carefully constructed calls to hold the deception together.

Every request came with the same threat: if Sarah told anyone, Ethan’s treatment would end.

But Creston wasn’t treating Ethan.

Mark himself had become seriously ill after his son’s death. He had secretly paid the company to experiment with a device built from tissue taken from a genetically related healthy child.

Lily hadn’t been helping her brother.

She had been used in an unauthorized experiment intended to help her father.