Chapter 20 - The Secret After M-17
Nobody touched the folder for almost a minute.
Finally, Luka put on gloves.
He opened it carefully.
Inside was a photograph.
A newborn baby.
The picture appeared to have been taken inside a hospital nursery.
A date was printed in the corner.
Eight years earlier.
The same year Ryan first began working with Hale.
Behind the photograph was a genetic screening chart.
Most of it meant nothing to me.
Then I saw one familiar name.
MORETTI.
I looked at Luka.
“What is this?”
He didn’t answer.
Dad took the document.
His hands began shaking.
“This isn’t possible.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Tell me why.”
Dad pointed toward the sample number.
M-18.
“Hale’s numbering system ended at seventeen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I copied the entire database.”
“There were seventeen control cases.”
“Seventeen families.”
“No eighteen.”
Luka turned over the photograph.
There was writing on the back.
One sentence.
M-17 WAS NOT THE FIRST MORETTI CHILD.
My stomach dropped.
Luka became completely still.
“What does that mean?”
I asked.
He didn’t answer immediately.
His face had lost all color.
Then he sat down.
“There was another theft.”
Dad looked at him.
“What?”
Luka stared at the photograph.
“Before my surgery.”
My pulse accelerated.
“You said your genetic material was collected after you were shot.”
“That was the sample I knew about.”
His eyes remained fixed on the baby.
“But when I was twenty-one, I participated in a university medical study funded by my family foundation.”
Dad swore under his breath.
“What kind of study?”
“Genetic disease research.”
“Blood samples.”
“Tissue.”
“Everything.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“Could Hale have accessed it?”
Luka slowly nodded.
“He worked with that university.”
Nobody spoke.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Every instinct told me not to answer.
I answered anyway.
A distorted voice spoke.
“You opened M-18.”
My heart pounded.
“Who are you?”
“You destroyed Hale.”
“You destroyed Bennett.”
“Now you’re asking questions about something much older.”
Luka held out his hand for the phone.
The caller continued before I could give it to him.
“Ask Luka where his older brother died.”
I looked at him.
Luka’s expression changed.
“What older brother?”
The caller laughed quietly.
The line disconnected.
I stared at Luka.
“You have a brother?”
“Had.”
He looked at the photograph.
“Matteo died twenty-nine years ago.”
“How old was he?”
“Six months.”
The room went silent.
Dad suddenly grabbed the genetic chart.
He scanned the numbers again.
Then again.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
He looked at Luka.
Then at me.
“This isn’t Luka’s genetic profile.”
My chest tightened.
“Then whose is it?”
Dad turned the page toward us.
“The sample is close enough to be immediate family.”
“But it predates Luka’s preserved material.”
Luka whispered one name.
“Matteo.”
“That’s impossible.”
Dad shook his head.
“Not if someone preserved something from him before he died.”
Luka stared at the photograph of the newborn.
For the first time, I saw fear in his eyes.
Not anger.
Not suspicion.
Fear.
I thought M-17 had been the secret that destroyed my marriage.
I thought Ryan’s downfall had ended the nightmare.
I thought Grace and I were finally free.
I was wrong.
M-17 had only exposed the people who manipulated my life.
M-18 reached further back.
Into Luka’s family.
Into a dead child’s medical history.
Into a program that existed years before Ryan Bennett ever joined Hale.
And somewhere in America, according to the photograph in my hands, there might be a child carrying genetic material from a Moretti baby who had supposedly died almost three decades earlier.
Dad turned the final page of the folder.
There was an address.
A name.
And a date.
The name made Luka stand so fast his chair struck the wall.
“What?”
I demanded.
He pointed at the page.
I read it aloud.
“Elena Moretti.”
Luka’s mother.
The woman everyone believed had died twelve years ago.
Beside her name were three words.
SUBJECT STILL ACTIVE.
I looked at Luka.
He looked back at me.
And suddenly we both understood the same terrifying possibility.
Maybe the dead people in this story weren’t dead.
Maybe the missing records were never really missing.
And maybe M-17 had never been designed to hide one stolen sample.
It had been designed to hide an entire bloodline.
Grace began crying in the next room.
I immediately stood.
Whatever M-18 was, whatever secrets remained inside the Moretti family, one thing had changed forever.
Nobody would ever decide my daughter’s future behind my back again.
Not Ryan.
Not Hale.
Not Luka.
Not even my father.
I picked Grace up and held her against my chest.
Then I looked at the red folder.
“Tomorrow, we find Elena Moretti.”
Luka slowly nodded.
Outside, a black car had been parked across the street for almost twenty minutes.
None of us noticed.
Inside the car, someone lifted a phone.
A camera clicked.
A photograph of me holding Grace appeared on the screen.
The person immediately sent it to an unknown number.
A reply arrived seconds later.
THE MOTHER OPENED M-18.
The person typed back.
WHAT DO WE DO?
Three dots appeared.
Then the answer came.
BRING HER TO ME.
ALIVE.
And beneath those words was a name none of us had expected to see again.
May you like
DR. CALVIN HALE.
TOBE CONTINUED
