Chapter 4 - THE LIE INSIDE MY MARRIAGE
I slapped Luka.
Hard.
His head turned.
He didn't stop me.
I hit him again.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Don't lie to me!”
“I knew your records were altered.”
“You knew enough to come here!”
“I suspected they were using your pregnancy to restart M-17.”
“And you signed her birth certificate!”
His jaw tightened.
“That was to stop Daniel from authorizing her transfer.”
I froze.
“What transfer?”
Luka pulled up another document.
A neonatal transfer authorization.
Emma Bennett.
Destination listed only as PRIVATE RESEARCH UNIT 4.
The signature line had already been completed.
Daniel's name.
My husband had authorized someone to take our newborn daughter.
I stopped feeling angry.
I felt hollow.
“He sold her.”
“We don't know that.”
“Yes, we do.”
My voice broke.
“He sold my baby.”
Luka crouched beside my bed.
“Then we make sure nobody touches her.”
I looked at him.
“You could really be her father.”
“I could.”
“And you didn't know?”
“No.”
“Prove it.”
He nodded.
“We do our own DNA test.”
“Now.”
“Now.”
Luka made one phone call.
Twenty minutes later, a gray-haired woman arrived carrying a medical case.
“Dr. Evelyn Shaw.”
Luka introduced us.
“She worked with your father.”
Evelyn looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“You look exactly like Samuel.”
“Did my father murder people with experiments too?”
She flinched.
“No.”
“Then explain M-17.”
Evelyn took samples from me, Emma, and Luka.
Then she sat down.
“M-17 wasn't a weapon.”
“What was it?”
“A treatment.”
She looked at Luka.
“He was dying.”
Luka said nothing.
“Luka had a rare immune disorder.”
Evelyn continued.
“Samuel developed an experimental gene therapy that saved him.”
“Then why hide it?”
“Because Moretti Biomedical's board realized the technique could do much more than cure one disease.”
“What?”
“Select traits.”
My skin crawled.
“Designer babies?”
“Eventually.”
Evelyn nodded.
“Intelligence markers.”
“Disease resistance.”
“Physical traits.”
“Potentially even lifespan.”
I looked at Emma.
“So they used me?”
“Someone did.”
“Why me?”
Evelyn's eyes filled with guilt.
“Because Samuel hid the second half of the research inside your genome.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“He knew they'd come after his files.”
“So he destroyed them.”
“But first, he encoded the final sequence into modified cells.”
“Where?”
Evelyn looked at me.
“Inside you.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“That's impossible.”
“No.”
Luka whispered.
“It isn't.”
Then Evelyn's phone rang.
She answered.
Listened.
And turned white.
“What happened?” Luka asked.
She lowered the phone.
“The DNA lab.”
“What about it?”
May you like
Evelyn looked at Emma.
“Someone just broke in.”
