Chapter 3 - THE DNA REPORT
The anonymous messages came from a prepaid number.
Leah ordered them traced anyway.
By one in the morning, we knew exactly nothing.
The phone had been purchased with cash in Queens.
Activated three days before the twins were born.
Used only once.
To contact me.
“Someone planned this,” Leah said.
“So did everyone else.”
I was tired enough that my voice sounded detached.
Dr. Sloan wanted me to sleep.
I refused until armed Hart security stood outside the nursery suite.
Not hospital security.
Mine.
The irony was not lost on me.
Twelve hours earlier, Richard had ordered security to keep me out of my own home.
Now six former federal agents were stationed between him and his sons.
At 1:37 a.m., Leah received a call from our investigators.
Dr. Leonard Voss existed.
He operated a prestigious genetics clinic outside Philadelphia.
He had published extensively.
Served as an expert witness.
Consulted in high-profile inheritance cases.
He also had a private connection to Marianne Sterling.
They had attended the same charity boards for nearly a decade.
“Find the payment contract,” I said.
“We’re trying.”
“Try faster.”
At 2:10 a.m., Richard arrived.
He never reached my floor.
Security stopped him in the lobby.
He called me seventeen times.
On the eighteenth, I answered.
“You cannot keep me from my children.”
The anger in his voice sounded genuine.
For a fraction of a second, I almost felt something.
Then I remembered the petition.
“You tried to challenge their paternity before they were even born.”
“I never filed that.”
“Your electronic signature says otherwise.”
“It was drafted.”
“By whom?”
“My mother’s lawyers.”
“And you signed it.”
Silence.
“Richard.”
“I thought it was asset protection.”
I laughed once.
It hurt my incision.
“You believed a document titled Petition to Challenge Paternity was asset protection?”
“I didn’t read the final version.”
“That might be the most believable thing you’ve said tonight.”
He ignored the insult.
“I need to see Noah and Eli.”
“No.”
“I’m their father.”
“According to your mother, nobody knows that.”
Another silence.
This one was different.
Heavy.
“Evelyn.”
“Yes?”
“Did Leah tell you about Voss?”
The room seemed to narrow around me.
“How do you know I found Voss?”
He exhaled.
“Because that’s what I was trying to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“Not on the phone.”
“You lost the privilege of dictating terms.”
“Evelyn, listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“My mother had tests done.”
“What tests?”
“Before the birth.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then explain what you do know.”
His voice dropped.
“She told me the twins weren’t mine.”
I looked at Noah.
My heart did not change pace.
Because I knew Richard was their biological father.
We had gone through fertility treatment after two miscarriages.
Every embryo was tracked.
Every procedure documented.
“Did you believe her?”
“I didn’t know what to believe.”
“You could have asked me.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That you had—”
He stopped.
“Say it.”
“That you had used someone else.”
I closed my eyes.
There are moments when anger becomes so complete it stops feeling hot.
It becomes clean.
Cold.
Precise.
“You thought I secretly selected another biological father for our children.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You just did.”
“I was confused.”
“No. You were convenient.”
“What?”
“You believed the explanation that gave you permission to treat me badly.”
“That’s not fair.”
I laughed again.
“Fair?”
“Let me come upstairs.”
“No.”
“I can explain.”
“You had six years.”
“Evelyn.”
“What did Voss give Marianne?”
“A report.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did it say?”
He hesitated.
“That neither child was biologically related to me.”
I stared at the wall.
“And yet you filed for authority over their assets.”
His silence told me everything.
“That’s interesting, Richard.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that.”
“No.”
“You believed they weren’t yours, but you were perfectly willing to become their financial guardian.”
“I was protecting Sterling interests.”
There it was.
Not his sons.
Not me.
Sterling interests.
I ended the call.
At 3:03 a.m., the investigator called.
They had obtained one of Voss’s sealed laboratory orders through a lawful preservation request after Leah alerted federal counsel to suspected financial fraud.
The order was unusual.
The sample names were coded.
But the dates matched my pregnancy.
“Samples from whom?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Who ordered the analysis?”
The investigator paused.
“Marianne Sterling.”
“And the purpose?”
“Inheritance compatibility analysis.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re still determining that.”
Then he said:
“There’s another name attached to the file.”
“Whose?”
“Victor Shaw.”
My deputy chairman.
The missing man.
I gripped the edge of the bed.
“Victor knew Voss?”
“Apparently.”
“When was the test ordered?”
He gave me the date.
April 2.
I stopped breathing for a moment.
That was five days after Richard’s birthday.
Five days after one of the fraudulent transactions.
Five days after I had fallen asleep beside my husband in our bedroom.
And three days after Marianne had suddenly insisted I attend a family lunch.
I remembered the restaurant.
The private room.
The glass of water beside my plate.
The small cut on my finger afterward.
I had thought I had caught it on broken crystal.
Maybe I had.
Maybe I hadn’t.
“What kind of sample did they test?”
“We only have one identifier.”
“What?”
“Maternal reference DNA.”
My blood went cold.
“They had my DNA.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“We don’t know.”
A knock sounded at the hospital door.
Security entered.
The agent’s face was hard.
“Ms. Hart.”
“What happened?”
“There’s a woman downstairs asking for you.”
“Who?”
“She says she worked for Dr. Voss.”
“What’s her name?”
“Claire Benton.”
“Why is she here?”
May you like
The agent glanced toward the twins.
“She says she knows what Marianne Sterling planned to do after the babies were born.”
