Chapter 7 - The False Paternity Test
Ethan called again that night.
This time I answered.
“Who gave you the DNA report?”
He was silent for a moment.
Then he laughed bitterly.
“So that’s your first question?”
“Yes.”
“Not whether it’s true?”
“I know it isn’t.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to tell me where you got it.”
His breathing changed.
“Dr. Samuel Voss.”
Luka and Mara exchanged a look.
I noticed.
“Who is he?”
Ethan heard me.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“He was your obstetric consultant.”
“I never met anyone named Voss.”
“Yes, you did.”
Ethan sounded confused now.
“He reviewed all your genetic screenings.”
Mara typed the name into her laptop.
Her face went pale.
Samuel Voss.
Director of Genomic Development.
Meridian Dynamics.
I gripped the phone.
“Ethan, Voss works for Meridian.”
Silence.
Then Ethan said quietly.
“What?”
“You knew that.”
“No.”
“You work for Meridian.”
“What are you talking about?”
I looked at Luka.
He shook his head slightly.
Ethan sounded genuinely confused.
“Victor Hale paid your company.”
I said.
“Millions.”
“I don’t know Victor Hale.”
“Stop lying.”
“I’m not.”
His voice cracked with anger.
“My investors are managed through Northbridge Capital.”
Mara’s fingers moved quickly over the keyboard.
Then she whispered.
“Northbridge is another shell.”
I closed my eyes.
Maybe Ethan had been bought without realizing who held the leash.
But that did not forgive what he had done.
“What about Vanessa?”
I asked.
Ethan became quiet.
His mistress.
The woman who had walked out of the hospital beside him.
“What about her?”
“You brought her while I was giving birth.”
“I brought her because she had the DNA report.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“Vanessa works for Voss.”
Luka stood.
Ethan continued.
“She told me you had been having an affair.”
“With who?”
Silence.
“Luka Moretti.”
I stared at Luka.
The absurdity almost made me laugh.
“I had never met Luka before today.”
“That isn’t what the photographs showed.”
“What photographs?”
Ethan sent them.
My phone filled with images.
A woman who looked like me entered hotels with Luka.
Another showed them embracing outside a restaurant.
My face.
My hair.
My coat.
But it was not me.
Luka stared at the pictures.
“Deepfakes.”
Mara shook her head.
“Not all of them.”
She zoomed in.
“That woman is real.”
Ethan heard her.
“Who is that?”
Mara looked at me.
“I think her name is Elise Carter.”
My blood froze.
“Carter?”
Luka’s face changed.
“Your mother’s younger sister.”
I stared at him.
“My mother didn’t have a sister.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Where is she?”
“No one knows.”
Mara opened another file.
“Elise disappeared twenty-six years ago.”
I felt dizzy.
“Before I was born?”
“Three months before.”
Luka looked at the photographs.
“If that’s Elise, she should be almost fifty.”
The woman in the pictures looked twenty-five.
Exactly like me.
No one spoke.
Ethan finally whispered through the phone.
“Clara, what the hell is going on?”
Before I could answer, we heard a woman scream on his end.
Then a crash.
“Vanessa?”
Ethan shouted.
The phone fell.
Footsteps.
Another scream.
Then a man’s voice spoke clearly into Ethan’s phone.
“Mr. Cole knows too much.”
May you like
A gunshot followed.
The line went dead.
