Chapter 10 - Never Supposed to Be Born

Daniel read the message again.

Then a third time.

The words did not change.

Rosa sat down hard on a kitchen chair.

“What does that mean?”

Rachel put the phone into an evidence bag she carried in her work case. “It means we stop touching anything and we call law enforcement.”

Daniel’s hands were shaking. “My son was never supposed to be born?”

Noah looked up from Rosa’s lap. “Daddy sad?”

Daniel crossed the room and knelt in front of him.

“No, buddy.” His voice broke anyway. “Daddy’s right here.”

Noah reached out and touched his cheek.

Then he looked at Rosa. “Rosa stay?”

Daniel looked at her.

“Yes,” he said. “Rosa stays.”

For the first time that day, Noah smiled.

It nearly destroyed him.

Police arrived twenty minutes later. Child protective services followed. Daniel hated every second of the questions, the photographs, the careful professional voices.

But he answered everything.

So did Rosa.

At 6:43 p.m., Rachel received a call from a detective.

Vanessa’s car had been found abandoned near the interstate.

Marcus’s phone was inside.

Neither Vanessa nor Marcus was there.

Then the detective gave Rachel a second piece of news.

The disposable phone contained deleted voice recordings.

One had already been recovered.

They played it in the study.

Vanessa’s voice filled the room.

“I told you I can’t keep pretending he’s mine.”

Marcus answered. “You wanted the marriage.”

“I wanted Daniel.”

“And Daniel wanted a family.”

“I didn’t agree to this.”

“You agreed when the clinic mixed the samples and you told me to bury it.”

Daniel gripped the edge of the desk.

Vanessa’s voice again: “What if Rosa ever finds him?”

Marcus: “She won’t.”

Vanessa: “And if she does?”

A pause.

Then Marcus said, “We make sure Daniel thinks she came for money.”

The recording ended.

Rosa was crying silently.

Daniel looked at Rachel. “Mixed what samples?”

Rachel opened the lab folder again.

At the very bottom was a clinic incident report.

She read one sentence and went pale.

“Daniel,” she said, “Vanessa was never genetically related to Noah.”

He stared at her.

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Rachel continued.

“And according to this, the clinic knew before the embryo transfer.”