Chapter 8 - Camille’s Secret
Camille was pregnant.
Derek had never told me.
The hospital database listed her at twenty-eight weeks.
My heart should have broken.
Instead, I felt strangely calm.
Maybe betrayal had a limit.
Maybe once your heart was shattered completely, new cracks no longer mattered.
“She’s carrying Derek’s baby.”
Rebecca looked at Luka.
Neither answered.
I noticed.
“What?”
Luka slid Camille’s laboratory file toward me.
Her paternity test had also been processed under M-17.
The listed father was Derek.
Probability of paternity:
99.98%.
“So that’s it.”
I laughed bitterly.
“He gets two daughters.”
“No.”
Luka pointed toward the report.
“Look at the sample date.”
The blood sample supposedly belonging to Derek had been collected while Derek was in Tokyo.
His passport records proved it.
“Then whose sample was it?”
“That is what we need to know.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Someone is using M-17 to manufacture paternity results.”
The obvious question hit me.
“Why?”
Luka looked at Isla.
“Control.”
He explained what my father had uncovered.
M-17 was not a single experiment.
It was a system.
Certain wealthy families had secretly used genetic testing, donor material, falsified paternity records, and hospital access to manipulate inheritance disputes.
Birth certificates.
Custody.
Trusts.
Family fortunes.
A laboratory could make one child appear unrelated to a father.
Another could be made to appear related.
Millions could move depending on one piece of paper.
My stomach turned.
“And my father discovered it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why he died.”
Luka did not answer.
He did not need to.
That afternoon, an envelope arrived at the estate.
No return address.
Inside was a USB drive.
There was also a handwritten note.
YOUR FATHER DID NOT DIE IN AN ACCIDENT.
I nearly dropped it.
Luka inserted the drive into an isolated computer.
One video file appeared.
The date was six years earlier.
The night my father died.
The video showed a parking garage.
My father entered the frame.
Someone followed him.
Malcolm Hayes.
They argued.
There was no audio.
Then Malcolm grabbed my father by the coat.
Another man appeared.
My father handed that man a small envelope.
The image froze before his face became visible.
Luka zoomed in.
My blood ran cold.
The second man was Derek.
May you like
My husband had been with my father the night he died.
Three months later, Derek met me for the first time.
