Chapter 15 - The Test That Could Destroy Us
Hunter stared at Bell as if he had spoken in another language.
“Kylie is not my sister.”
Bell leaned against the surgical table.
“Then prove it.”
Agent Morris ordered the federal officers to secure him.
They cuffed his wrists.
He did not resist.
He wanted us confused.
Confusion was his last weapon.
Daniel was untied first.
Dr. Crowe entered with the emergency team and examined his shoulder.
The bullet had passed through muscle.
Painful, but survivable.
Hunter refused treatment until someone released his hands.
I cut the rope myself.
He rubbed his wrists and looked at me.
“If Charles is your biological father—”
“Don’t.”
“I need to know.”
“So do I.”
His face twisted with disgust.
Not at me.
At himself.
We had been husband and wife for seven years.
If Bell’s claim was true, every memory had become something poisonous.
Samuel entered the hallway after Charles, but he returned alone.
“He escaped through the river tunnel,” he said.
“And Margaret?”
“He took her.”
His voice broke.
I touched his arm.
“We’ll find her.”
He nodded, but his eyes told me he feared Charles would punish Margaret for failing.
Agent Morris collected the confession.
“The original letter can be tested for alterations.”
Bell laughed from the floor.
“Test the blood instead.”
I looked at him.
“Yours?”
“Mine. Charles’s. Hunter’s. Yours.”
“You knew this question would emerge.”
“I knew Arthur enjoyed rewriting history.”
Agent Morris arranged emergency DNA samples.
A federal mobile laboratory could process immediate relationship probabilities within hours.
While technicians worked, officers searched the clinic.
They found frozen biological material.
Thousands of files.
Payments from judges, senators, corporate executives, and foreign families.
They also found empty storage chambers.
Someone had removed dozens of embryos recently.
Bell claimed Charles had them.
Charles had escaped with Margaret, the missing genetic archive, and perhaps children who had never been born.
This was larger than my marriage.
Larger than my trust.
But before I could face any of it, I needed one answer.
Who was my father?
We waited in the clinic’s former nursery.
Rows of empty bassinets stood beneath dusty observation windows.
Hunter sat across from me.
For the first time all night, he looked stripped of arrogance.
“I did love you,” he said.
I looked at him.
“You called me worthless.”
“I said what Isabelle wanted to hear.”
“You planned to steal my money.”
“My father told me the trust belonged to the Vale family.”
“You forged my signature.”
“I thought I was reclaiming what he built.”
“You filed papers to lock me in a psychiatric facility.”
He lowered his head.
“There is no defense for that.”
“No.”
“I knew you would never sign the transfer after you learned about Isabelle.”
“So you decided to erase my legal identity.”
He closed his eyes.
“I became my father.”
“No. You made choices.”
That hurt him more.
Blaming Charles allowed Hunter to imagine himself as another victim.
But he had poured the wine.
He had stolen the bracelet.
He had allowed Isabelle to forge my name.
He had listened while doctors lied about my mind.
“I’m going to testify,” he said.
“Because you’re sorry?”
“Because Charles will keep doing this.”
“That is not an answer.”
He met my eyes.
“Both.”
The laboratory technician entered.
Four sealed reports rested in her hands.
Agent Morris joined us.
“The results are preliminary,” she said. “But the relationship probabilities are strong.”
My hands went cold.
She opened the first report.
“Marcus Bell is not Kylie’s biological father.”
Bell’s confidence finally shattered.
“No.”
Agent Morris continued.
“Marcus Bell is unrelated to Kylie.”
I breathed again.
But only for a second.
She opened the second report.
“Charles Vale is also not Kylie’s biological father.”
Hunter exhaled.
We were not siblings.
Relief moved through the room, complicated and painful.
“Then who is?” I asked.
Agent Morris opened the third report.
“This comparison was run against stored material labeled Arthur Rhodes.”
Daniel leaned forward.
The technician shook her head.
“Arthur Rhodes was not Kylie’s biological father.”
I already knew that from the letter.
“What about the final sample?”
Agent Morris looked at Daniel.
“The fourth comparison was between Kylie and Daniel Rhodes.”
She paused.
“You are not half-siblings.”
Daniel’s face changed.
“You are not full siblings either.”
“Then what are we?”
The technician took a breath.
“The genetic similarity indicates that Daniel is Kylie’s biological father.”
No one moved.
Daniel stared at me in horror.
“That’s impossible.”
Bell began laughing again.
Not because he was pleased.
Because the truth had broken everyone.
Agent Morris raised the report.
“The sample labeled Daniel Rhodes does not belong to the man sitting here.”
I turned toward him.
“Who are you?”
The man I had called my brother for my entire life lowered his eyes.
“My name is David Laurent.”
Isabelle’s family name.
He looked at me with tears in his eyes.
May you like
“I am Evelyn’s older brother.”
👉 The man Kylie loved as her brother had stolen Daniel’s identity, and the real Daniel Rhodes was still somewhere inside the Legacy Project.
