Chapter 13 - THE SECOND PATERNITY TEST
I stared at Daniel.
He looked as shocked as I felt.
“I never saw a real result.”
Vale laughed.
“Of course you didn’t.”
My mother shook her head violently.
“Elena, don’t listen to him.”
But my mind had already gone backward.
The pregnancy.
Daniel’s long business trips.
The weeks we barely touched.
The fertility clinic he insisted we visit when conception took longer than expected.
I felt nauseated.
“No.”
Vale held up another report.
“Sofia was conceived through assisted reproductive manipulation.”
My knees weakened.
“We never did IVF.”
“You believed you were receiving hormonal treatment.”
My stomach turned.
I remembered injections.
Blood draws.
A minor procedure Daniel told me was routine.
Luka looked murderous.
Vale continued.
“The embryo implanted into you was genetically yours.”
He paused.
“But Daniel was not the paternal source.”
I looked at Daniel.
He whispered.
“I didn’t know.”
For once, I believed him.
“Whose DNA did you use?”
Vale looked toward Luka.
Luka went completely still.
I felt terror before anyone spoke.
“No.”
Luka’s eyes met mine.
“I never donated anything.”
Vale smiled.
“Not willingly.”
Luka lunged forward.
Two armed men emerged from the shadows.
My mother screamed.
Vale lifted one hand.
“Stay where you are.”
Luka stopped.
His entire body was rigid.
Vale explained that Luka had been hospitalized after a motorcycle crash seven years earlier.
Blood.
Tissue.
Reproductive material.
Meridian had obtained everything.
I stared at Luka.
He looked sick.
“Are you saying…”
Vale smiled.
“Sofia Moretti is biologically Luka’s daughter.”
Silence.
Absolute silence.
I felt the room disappear around me.
Luka whispered my name.
I stepped away from him.
Not because I blamed him.
Because I could not process it.
Daniel sank onto an old crate.
Vanessa looked irritated.
“This changes nothing.”
It changed everything.
The stranger who had signed the father line had unknowingly signed the truth.
Luka looked at Sofia’s photograph on my phone.
For the first time, his control broke.
His eyes filled.
Vale noticed.
“That is why she is valuable.”
Luka’s grief instantly became rage.
“She is not valuable.”
He stepped forward.
“She is a child.”
Vale raised his weapon.
“And she belongs to Meridian.”
My mother suddenly kicked backward.
Her chair struck Vanessa.
The gun in Vanessa’s hand fell.
Luka moved.
Everything happened at once.
Daniel tackled one guard.
I reached my mother.
Marcus burst through the side door.
Vale ran.
May you like
Before disappearing into the darkness, he shouted one sentence.
“Ask Luka why Michael really disappeared.”
