Marco’s eyes remained on the screen.
“Gabriel.”
A knock sounded at the hospital door.
All three of us turned.
Dr. Bennett entered.
She held a file in her hands.
The expression on her face was serious but composed.
“Mr. Mercer, Ms. Ross, I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing has happened.”
She walked closer to Elena.
“The lab repeated one of your tests because the first result didn’t make sense.”
Elena looked at me.
“What test?”
Dr. Bennett opened the file.
“Your blood typing.”
Elena frowned.
“I know my blood type.”
“Yes. That’s why we repeated it.”
The doctor placed the file on the table.
“There is another issue.”
My heart started pounding.
“The baby?”
“The baby appears stable.”
I exhaled.
Dr. Bennett looked from Elena to me.
“When you arrived, Ms. Ross, you said Luke Mercer was the father.”
Elena’s face hardened.
“He is.”
“I am not questioning you.”
“Then what are you saying?”
The doctor hesitated.
“I reviewed an older medical record transferred from the clinic listed in your insurance history.”
“What clinic?”
“Mercer Family Medical.”
I had never heard of it.
Neither had Elena.
Dr. Bennett saw our confusion.
“According to the record, Ms. Ross underwent genetic screening there eight months ago.”
Elena’s hand went cold in mine.
“No, I didn’t.”
“That’s what I suspected.”
Dr. Bennett removed a printed page.
“The file includes your name, date of birth, and previous address. But there are inconsistencies.”
“What kind?” I asked.
“Someone created a medical record using Ms. Ross’s identity.”
Marco stood.
“Why?”
The doctor looked at him, then at us.
“I don’t know.”
She turned the page around.
At the bottom was a handwritten notation.
I leaned closer.
Two names.
Two dates.
And a series of numbers.
My name appeared first.
LUKE SAMUEL MERCER.
Below it was a second name.
ELENA MARIE ROSS.
Between them was a typed heading.
GENETIC COMPATIBILITY MATCH.
The room became painfully quiet.
Elena stared at the paper.
“What does that mean?”
Dr. Bennett’s voice was careful.
“Medically, without context, very little. It could relate to almost anything from inherited disease screening to fertility planning.”
“We never did fertility planning,” Elena said.
“I understand.”
I took the paper.
In the upper right corner was a date.
Eight months earlier.
Four months before the threats began.
Five months before I asked Elena for a divorce.
Then I noticed the physician’s signature.
Dr. Nathaniel Vale.
I knew that name.
Not from a hospital.
Not from business.
From my father’s private study.
Six years ago.
The night before he died.
There had been a blue folder on the desk beside his bed.
VALE printed across the tab.
I had ignored it.
I had been too angry.
Too certain there would be time to understand later.
“Luke?” Elena whispered.
I barely heard her.
A final handwritten note appeared beneath the genetic results.
Three words.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
My father’s.
I had seen it on birthday cards.
Contracts.
Letters from boarding school.
The message read:
THE CHILD MATTERS.
I stared at it until the letters blurred.
My father had been dead for six years.
Elena and I had not met until five years ago.
And somehow, eight months before tonight, someone had created a secret medical file connecting our names beneath a warning written in the hand of a dead man.
My phone vibrated.
A text.
Unknown number.
There was no message.
Only a photograph.
My mother sat in a dimly lit room, apparently unharmed, staring directly at the camera.
Beside her stood Daniel.
Alive.
Calm.
Holding the same blue folder I remembered from my father’s hospital room.
But it was the person on Daniel’s other side who made Marco step backward.
The scar beneath the man’s right eye was clearly visible now.
Gabriel Reyes.
Beneath the photograph were six words.
ASK DANIEL WHO INTRODUCED YOU TO ELENA.
I slowly raised my eyes.
Elena was watching me.
“What is it?”
I thought of the gallery opening five years earlier.
The crowded room in Chelsea.
The champagne I had not wanted.
The painting Elena had called pretentious.
The first time she laughed at me.
I had always believed meeting her was the only beautiful accident of my life.
Now, for the first time, I wondered if it had been an accident at all.
PART 3
For several seconds, I said nothing.
I simply stared at the photograph on my phone.
My mother.
Daniel.
Gabriel Reyes.
Three people who, until that night, had existed in entirely separate corners of my life.
Now they stood side by side beneath a dim yellow light, connected by a blue folder my dead father had hidden six years ago.
And beneath them, six words.
ASK DANIEL WHO INTRODUCED YOU TO ELENA.
“Luke.”
Elena’s voice pulled me back.
She was still holding my hand.
Her fingers were cold.
“What is it?”
I looked at her.
For five years, I had believed I remembered the moment we met perfectly.
A Thursday evening in Chelsea.
Rain on the windows.
Too much white wine being served to people pretending to understand paintings.
Elena standing alone in front of a large red canvas, her head tilted slightly to one side.
I had stopped beside her.
“You’re frowning at it,” I had said.
She hadn’t looked at me.
“I’m deciding whether it’s profound or whether the artist ran out of blue paint.”
I laughed.
Then she looked at me.
That was it.
That was the beginning.
At least, I had always thought it was.
“Luke?”
I turned the phone toward her.
Elena read the message.
Her expression changed.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
