Chapter 10 - THE DNA LIE
For the second time in days, I was told Adrien might be my brother.
This time I refused to panic.
“Proof.”
My mother stared.
“What?”
“I need proof.”
Evelyn’s face crumpled.
“You always were stubborn.”
“Good.”
Adrien said nothing.
But he looked like a man standing on the edge of a building.
Evelyn sat.
Then explained.
Calvin Reddick had believed I was his child.
Vittorio had believed the same at first.
But months before the crash, Evelyn secretly arranged DNA testing.
“Vittorio was your biological father.”
Adrien walked away.
I felt sick.
“No.”
Evelyn reached for me.
I stepped back.
“Where is the test?”
“Destroyed.”
“Then you don’t know.”
“I saw it.”
“Could it have been altered?”
She froze.
That was enough.
“Who arranged the laboratory?”
“Samuel.”
Bell.
Reddick’s brother.
The room changed.
Adrien turned.
“Samuel controlled the test?”
Evelyn’s face drained.
“Yes.”
“Then it proves nothing.”
Hope and horror collided.
We needed real testing.
Immediately.
Dr. Bell had access to old samples from Vittorio through private medical storage.
Adrien located preserved pathology material from a surgery his father underwent before death.
Legal chain-of-custody testing took longer than any of us wanted.
Forty-eight hours felt like forty-eight years.
I stayed with Evelyn.
She remembered pieces.
After the crash, Bell kept her medicated.
Told her I had died.
Told her Nora was unreachable.
Years later, memory returned.
He threatened to kill us if she tried to leave.
So she stayed.
Not because she was weak.
Because she believed silence kept us alive.
I understood.
I hated it.
Both could be true.
Then the results arrived.
Adrien and I stood together.
Marco opened the envelope.
Vittorio Viscari:
Excluded as biological father.
I exhaled so hard I nearly collapsed.
Adrien closed his eyes.
Not siblings.
Evelyn covered her mouth.
“Then Samuel lied to me.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
But one question remained.
Who was my father?
The lab had also compared my DNA against Calvin Reddick’s sample recovered from an old legal medical screening.
Excluded.
Not him either.
Evelyn stared at the results.
“That’s impossible.”
“Who else?”
She went pale.
“No.”
“Mom.”
“One night.”
My chest tightened.
“Who?”
She looked at Matteo Moretti.
He had joined us after the results.
His face changed before she spoke.
Evelyn whispered:
“Daniel Moretti.”
Matteo’s younger brother.
Dead twenty-four years.
Matteo sat down.
“You and Daniel?”
Evelyn began crying.
“He was kind.”
Everything changed again.
Daniel Moretti had died before knowing Evelyn was pregnant.
Which made me Carlo Moretti’s granddaughter through his son.
Still a Moretti heir.
But not Matteo’s niece through Evelyn.
His niece through Daniel.
Matteo looked at me.
“You’re my brother’s daughter.”
The emotion in his face was real.
Then Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression hardened.
“Reddick located us.”
“How?”
Before anyone answered, the lights went out.
A generator failed.
Windows shattered downstairs.
Men entered the house.
Adrien pulled me behind stone cover.
Evelyn screamed.
Gunfire erupted.
And over the darkness came Calvin Reddick’s voice through the house speakers.
“Lena.”
My blood froze.
“I’ve waited twenty-two years for the truth your mother stole from me.”
May you like
Then he said something worse.
“Bring me the archive, or I kill Evelyn properly this time.”
