Chapter 3 - THE BLOOD TEST
Victor did not move.
Daniel looked away.
Even Serena seemed to regret saying it.
Victor finally laughed.
It was quiet.
Disbelieving.
“Noah is my son.”
“I didn't say he wasn't your son.”
“You said I'm not his father.”
“I said the records were altered.”
“By whom?”
“I don't know.”
“Alexander?”
“Possibly.”
Victor turned toward Eleanor.
She couldn't meet his eyes.
And that was when something inside him broke.
“You knew.”
Eleanor whispered, “I suspected.”
“How long?”
“Since Emily's pregnancy.”
Victor recoiled.
“You let me raise Noah for fourteen months while wondering whether he was mine?”
“I was afraid of what the truth would do.”
“To whom?”
“To everyone.”
Victor stared at his mother as if seeing a stranger.
Then Dr. Morrison appeared at the security-room door.
Victor immediately forgot everything else.
“Noah?”
“He has a minor fracture near the elbow.”
Victor closed his eyes.
“Will he need surgery?”
“No. Immobilization and monitoring. Children his age usually heal very well.”
“Can I see him?”
“Of course.”
Victor walked upstairs.
Lily sat beside Noah on the nursery sofa.
The toddler had a tiny blue splint around his arm.
His cheeks were still wet.
Victor crouched.
Noah reached toward him with his uninjured arm.
“Da.”
That single syllable shattered whatever uncertainty Serena's revelation had created.
Victor lifted him carefully.
“Yes.”
He kissed Noah's forehead.
“Daddy's here.”
No laboratory could change that.
No document.
No brother.
No dead doctor.
Nothing.
Lily watched him.
“Mr. Blackwood…”
“Victor.”
She blinked.
“You've protected him when I wasn't here. Tonight especially. Call me Victor.”
She nodded.
He noticed her wrist.
Purple bruises were forming.
“Did Serena do that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Lily hesitated.
Victor had begun to hate that hesitation.
Everyone in his house had learned to be afraid of telling him the truth.
“Tell me.”
“Miss Vale came into the nursery and tried to take Noah downstairs.”
“Why?”
“She said she wanted photographs with him.”
“At nine at night?”
“I told her no.”
Lily looked ashamed.
“She became angry. She said after the wedding she would decide who was allowed near him.”
Victor's jaw tightened.
“She grabbed Noah.”
“And you stopped her.”
“I tried.”
“What happened?”
“She pulled him harder. I heard him cry. I grabbed her arm. She shoved me into the table.”
Victor looked toward Noah's splint.
Then back at Lily.
“You saved my son.”
“I should have protected him better.”
“You did.”
Lily cried quietly.
Victor looked toward Daniel.
“Police?”
“Arriving.”
“Serena doesn't leave.”
“She won't.”
Victor returned downstairs after Noah fell asleep.
Serena sat in the library between two security officers.
Eleanor stood near the fireplace.
Victor entered carrying a sealed evidence bag containing the recorder.
“I want a DNA test.”
Eleanor looked pained.
“Victor.”
“Not because Noah's place in my life depends on it.”
He looked directly at her.
“It doesn't.”
Then he turned toward Serena.
“I want to know what someone was desperate enough to kill Emily to hide.”
Serena flinched.
“You don't know she was killed.”
“No.”
Victor's eyes hardened.
“But someone manipulated her medication, bribed her doctor, altered fertility records, entered my house under stolen credentials, deleted surveillance, and recruited my fiancée.”
He paused.
“So I'm finished assuming coincidence.”
The police took Serena's statement and arrested her for assault and child endangerment.
But before she was led away, she stopped near Victor.
“Alexander will come for the recorder.”
Victor said nothing.
“And when he realizes you know about the clinic, he'll come for Noah too.”
Victor stepped closer.
“Why?”
Serena looked at Eleanor.
“Ask your mother about Sebastian.”
Eleanor's face collapsed.
Victor grabbed Serena's arm before the officer could move her.
“Who is Sebastian?”
Serena smiled through tears.
“That's the question your family should have answered thirty-five years ago.”
The officers removed her.
Victor turned slowly toward his mother.
“Sebastian.”
Eleanor whispered, “Your uncle.”
“My father didn't have a brother.”
“Yes, he did.”
Victor stared.
“Sebastian Blackwood was your grandfather's oldest son.”
“Was?”
“He disappeared.”
“When?”
“Thirty-seven years ago.”
“Why have I never heard his name?”
“Because your grandfather erased him from the family.”
The word erased struck differently now.
“What did he do?”
Eleanor looked into the fire.
“He fell in love with someone the family considered unsuitable.”
“That got him erased?”
“There was more.”
“What?”
“She was pregnant.”
Victor waited.
“Your grandfather believed the child would create a claim against the family trust.”
Victor frowned.
“Why?”
“Because Sebastian was the firstborn son.”
“And?”
“The original Blackwood trust passes controlling ownership through the firstborn bloodline.”
Victor understood.
“If Sebastian had a son…”
“Then your father's branch should never have controlled Blackwood Holdings.”
The implications hit slowly.
“Did Sebastian have a child?”
“We were told the baby died.”
“Told by whom?”
“My father-in-law.”
Victor walked toward her.
“And now?”
Eleanor's eyes filled with tears.
“Years later I learned there may have been a surviving child.”
Victor stared.
“Who?”
“I never found out.”
Daniel stepped in.
“Sir.”
He held a tablet.
“The DNA lab can run an expedited test using your sample and Noah's.”
“Do it.”
Victor submitted the sample that night.
He did not sleep.
At 4:30 in the morning, Daniel found something else.
Dr. Malcolm Creed had not retired.
He had disappeared.
His bank accounts stopped being used exactly seventeen days after Emily's death.
At 7:10 a.m., police searched Serena's apartment.
They found burner phones.
Three false passports.
And copies of the Blackwood family trust.
At 9:00 a.m., Victor received the DNA results.
Daniel stood beside him.
Eleanor waited across the room.
Victor opened the report.
Probability of paternity:
0.00%.
Victor's vision blurred.
His hands trembled.
Then Daniel pointed lower.
“There is another match.”
Victor looked.
The lab's expanded familial analysis showed something strange.
Noah shared a substantial percentage of DNA with Victor.
Not enough to be his son.
But far too much to be unrelated.
Victor stared at the classification.
“Close biological relative.”
Daniel nodded.
“Most likely nephew, half-nephew, or grand-nephew.”
Victor looked toward Eleanor.
She covered her mouth.
And suddenly Serena's warning made sense.
Noah was not outside the Blackwood family.
He was deeper inside it than anyone realized.
Victor looked down at the report.
Then he noticed the laboratory had flagged an archived genetic reference.
A court-ordered sample stored twenty-seven years earlier.
The name attached to it was impossible.
SEBASTIAN BLACKWOOD.
Victor's uncle had supposedly disappeared thirty-seven years ago.
Yet someone with his DNA had been tested only twenty-seven years ago.
Victor turned to Daniel.
“Find that case.”
Daniel typed quickly.
Then stopped.
“What?”
“The record is sealed.”
“By whom?”
May you like
Daniel looked at him.
“Your father.”
