Chapter 9 - The Paternity Test Clears Mariana Completely
Richard was Chloe’s biological father.
The probability of paternity exceeded 99.99 percent.
Mariana sat down when she heard.
Chloe laughed once from pure disbelief.
Richard cried.
The Northstar flag had been wrong.
But why?
The answer came from the sample records.
Northstar had not tested Richard’s DNA as the paternal reference.
The submitted sample belonged to Samuel Mercer.
Richard’s father.
Samuel apparently used his own blood while labeling it as Richard’s
reference.
Mariana stared at Phoebe.
“Why would he do that?”
Phoebe had a theory but refused to present it as fact.
They needed Samuel’s records.
Helen helped locate his archived correspondence.
Inside a locked estate file was a letter Samuel never sent.
It explained everything.
Samuel had discovered years earlier that Richard was not his biological
son.
Richard had been conceived through donor insemination after Samuel
learned he was infertile.
Richard’s mother, Evelyn, carried the pregnancy.
Samuel raised Richard as his son.
He never told him.
When Richard asked Samuel to help test Chloe, Samuel panicked.
If Richard’s DNA entered a hereditary study alongside Samuel’s, their
own lack of biological relationship might be exposed.
So Samuel substituted his sample.
That substitution produced the paternity inconsistency with Chloe.
The test had never revealed that Chloe was unrelated to Richard.
It had revealed that Chloe was unrelated to Samuel.
Richard read the letter in silence.
His entire understanding of his father changed in one afternoon.
Chloe looked at him.
“So you spent three years thinking I wasn’t yours because Grandpa was
hiding that you weren’t biologically his?”
Richard nodded.
The cruelty of the irony silenced everyone.
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A secret from one generation had created fear in the next.
And Richard had passed that fear directly onto his daughter.
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