Chapter 2 - The Man Rocky Hated
Maya did not explain the report that night.
Not to Rocky.
Not to anyone.
She took Emma home.
Bathed her.
Fed her scrambled eggs and toast.
Then sat beside her until she fell asleep.
Only afterward did Maya allow herself to cry.
Her husband, Luke, had been gone for eleven months.
Killed in a highway accident at thirty-seven.
Since then, Maya had done everything alone.
Bills.
School.
Grief.
Emma’s nightmares.
Rocky was Luke’s father.
At least that was what everyone had always believed.
And before Luke died, Rocky had been difficult but tolerable.
After the funeral, something changed.
He began questioning Emma.
Her eyes.
Her hair.
Her blood type.
Then came small comments.
“She doesn’t look like Luke.”
“Funny how different she is.”
“Are you sure Luke never had doubts?”
Maya ignored him.
Until three weeks earlier.
Rocky called her into his study.
On the desk was a private DNA report.
“This proves it.”
Maya frowned.
“Proves what?”
“That Emma isn’t Luke’s.”
The room went cold.
Maya stared at the pages.
Probability of biological relationship appeared low.
Rocky leaned back.
“My son died believing a lie.”
Maya slapped the document onto his desk.
“Who took Emma’s DNA?”
Rocky hesitated.
That hesitation mattered.
“You had no permission.”
“I don’t need permission to protect my family.”
“From a five-year-old?”
“From you.”
Maya walked out.
But she took a photograph of the report.
That night she noticed something strange.
The testing laboratory had not compared Emma with Luke.
Luke was dead.
No preserved sample existed.
Instead, Rocky had submitted his own DNA for a grandparentage test.
And according to the report, Emma was almost certainly not biologically related to Rocky.
Rocky thought that meant Maya had cheated.
Maya knew she hadn’t.
Luke was Emma’s father.
There had never been anyone else.
So only one possibility remained.
Something was wrong with Rocky’s relationship to Luke.
Maya contacted an independent genetic counselor.
Then an attorney.
Then a laboratory.
Two weeks later, she obtained a legally supervised test using a preserved medical sample from Luke’s hospital records.
Emma was Luke’s biological daughter.
99.99%.
No question.
But the laboratory found something else.
Luke’s old sample had been tested years earlier.
Long before Emma was born.
Someone had ordered a comparison between Luke and another man.
The authorization form carried a familiar signature.
Not Luke’s.
Not Maya’s.
And not Rocky’s.
The signature belonged to Eleanor Bennett.
May you like
Rocky’s late wife.
Luke’s mother.
