Chapter 9 - THE DNA TEST
Luka had already arranged an independent DNA laboratory.
No Hale employees.
No Saint Vincent systems.
No samples stored digitally under our names.
A technician came directly to Rachel’s office.
She swabbed Luka.
She swabbed my daughter.
Then she sealed both samples in front of us.
I watched every movement.
“How long?”
“Preliminary exclusion or relationship probability can be available quickly.”
“Full legal verification takes longer.”
I nodded.
For the first time since labor began, exhaustion swallowed me.
Rachel placed a hand on my shoulder.
“There’s a bedroom upstairs.”
“You should sleep.”
“I can’t.”
My daughter stirred.
Luka stood several feet away.
He had kept that distance since I pulled away from him earlier.
I appreciated it.
Nothing about this situation was normal.
If the DNA test confirmed what we feared, Luka was not a stranger who had impulsively signed a form.
He was my daughter’s biological father.
Yet neither of us had chosen it.
Neither of us had even known the other existed until hours ago.
“How did you know to come today?”
I asked.
“My father couldn’t have known my delivery date seven years ago.”
Luka hesitated.
Then he removed his phone.
“Three weeks ago, somebody accessed M-17.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“My security system monitors several old identifiers connected to the investigation.”
“When M-17 appeared again inside Saint Vincent’s network, I started tracing it.”
He looked at me.
“Your name appeared beside it.”
“So you’ve known for three weeks?”
“I knew you were pregnant.”
“I knew your father’s warning.”
“I did not know whether the child was connected to me.”
“Then why come to the delivery room?”
“Because Dr. Pike scheduled an unsupervised newborn blood collection forty minutes after your delivery.”
My stomach twisted.
“And Ethan?”
“I saw him arrive with Vanessa.”
Luka’s mouth hardened.
“I knew he was preparing to run.”
My daughter made another tiny sound.
Luka looked toward her but did not move closer.
Something in his face hurt to see.
“You can hold her.”
His eyes snapped to mine.
I hadn’t planned to say it.
But suddenly it felt cruel to deny him because of something done to both of us.
“If you want.”
Luka approached slowly.
I showed him how to support her head.
The tattooed man who had faced security officers without blinking looked terrified.
When I placed my daughter in his arms, he stopped breathing.
She opened her eyes.
Luka stared down at her.
“Hi.”
His voice broke.
“You’ve had a complicated first day.”
I almost smiled.
Then Rachel’s phone rang.
She answered.
Her expression changed.
“That was fast.”
Luka looked up.
My heart began pounding.
Rachel put the call on speaker.
The technician spoke carefully.
“The probability that Ethan Bennett is the biological father is effectively zero.”
My knees weakened.
Then came the second sentence.
“The preliminary relationship between Luka Moretti and the infant is consistent with biological paternity.”
Nobody moved.
Luka looked down at the baby in his arms.
My daughter.
His daughter.
May you like
And somewhere across the city, Ethan Bennett still believed he controlled the truth.
He had no idea the truth had just become a person holding his child.
