Chapter 9 - THE DNA MATCH
The court ordered samples from Ethan, Emma, and me.
The official reason was paternity.
The real reason was M-17.
Luka had arranged for the sealed archival sample to be tested by an independent laboratory as soon as the court authorized comparison.
Ethan fought every step.
His lawyers filed motions.
Richard called hospital executives.
Someone attempted to have the M-17 sample declared contaminated.
But Mara had expected them to resist.
My father had too.
Inside his metal box, we discovered one final instruction.
If M-17 is challenged, locate St. Matthew’s storage room B.
St. Matthew’s had been abandoned for eleven years.
Luka and I went there with a court-appointed evidence officer.
Room B was behind an old chapel.
Inside were metal lockers.
Locker seventeen opened with my father’s brass key.
A sealed neonatal blood card waited inside.
The chain-of-custody form carried three signatures.
Sofia Moretti.
Thomas Bennett.
And Dr. Malcolm Voss.
Luka stared at Sofia’s name for a long time.
“She knew she might die.”
I touched his arm.
“She made sure the truth wouldn’t.”
He looked at me.
For one second, the hard man from my hospital room disappeared.
Then the walls returned.
Three days later, Mara called everyone into her office.
The laboratory results had arrived.
Emma was Ethan’s biological daughter.
I had expected that.
What came next changed everything.
Ethan’s DNA matched the M-17 neonatal sample.
Probability of identity.
99.9998 percent.
Ethan Mercer was the missing infant from case seventeen.
But there was another result.
The lab had compared Ethan to the genetic profile Richard Mercer had submitted years earlier for a corporate insurance policy.
They were not father and son.
Not even close.
Ethan’s entire identity had been built on falsified records.
Richard Mercer had raised a stolen infant as his biological heir.
I should have felt satisfaction.
Instead, I felt sick.
Ethan had been a stolen baby.
Whatever he had done to me, that part wasn’t his fault.
Then Mara slid another page across the desk.
“Read the date.”
The report showed Ethan had ordered a private DNA test when he was nineteen.
He had known for nine years.
The same year my father disappeared.
I looked at Luka.
“He knew before he met me.”
“Yes.”
“He knew he was M-17.”
“Yes.”
“And he married me because my father had the proof.”
Luka nodded.
Mara handed me another document.
It was an email recovered from the archive.
Ethan had written it at nineteen.
Find Bennett before he goes federal.
A reply appeared beneath it.
If Bennett refuses, remove him.
The sender was Richard Mercer.
May you like
And the date was the night my father vanished.
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