Chapter 1: The Wrong Blood

Chapter 1: The Wrong Blood

The rain came down in sheets, a relentless, percussive drumming against the thin windows of the motel room. It was the kind of night that washed the world clean, but for Ethan Thorne, it only seemed to smear the grime. The only light came from the cold, blue-white glow of his laptop screen, reflecting in his wide, bloodshot eyes. On the screen, a single PDF file was open. A file that had cost him seven hundred dollars and what was left of his sanity.

Paternity Test Results: Confidential

His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. He’d told himself it was just a precaution. Five years on the run, five years of looking over his shoulder, it bred a certain kind of paranoia. A need to check, to double-check, to verify every foundation until you were sure it wouldn’t crumble beneath you. It was just a loose end. A simple mail-in kit, a swab from his cheek, a swab from Leo’s, sent to a discreet lab under a false name. An expensive piece of paper to silence the whisper of doubt that sometimes coiled in his gut during the deepest hours of the night.

He scrolled down past the clinical jargon, the charts of alleles and genetic markers that meant nothing to him. His eyes snagged on the final, brutal summary at the bottom of the page.

Alleged Father: Subject A Child: Subject B

Based on the analysis of the DNA loci, Subject A is excluded as the biological father of Subject B.

Probability of Paternity: 0.00%

The numbers seemed to vibrate on the screen. 0.00%. Not a flicker of a doubt. Not a margin for error. An absolute. A period at the end of a sentence that had been his entire life.

“No,” Ethan whispered, the sound swallowed by the storm outside. “No, that’s not possible.”

His hand, trembling, went to the mousepad. He scrolled back up, his eyes darting over the sample numbers. Had he mixed them up? Labeled them incorrectly? But he’d been so careful, his movements as precise and deliberate as the architectural drawings he used to make in another lifetime. He remembered the sterile swabs, the tight seal on the envelopes. There was no mistake.

The Genesis Clinic had promised him a perfect replica. A flawless copy, down to the last strand of DNA. They had taken the salvaged genetic material from their son—his son—and they had given him back. A second chance, born in a sterile lab instead of a hospital. They had assured him the science was absolute. Leo, his beautiful, resurrected boy, was identical to the original in every conceivable way.

And if that was true…

The thought hit him like a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. He shoved his chair back from the flimsy desk, the legs scraping harshly against the linoleum. The room felt suddenly small, the walls closing in.

If the clone was a perfect genetic copy of the first Leo…

And he, Ethan, was not the father of this Leo…

Then he hadn't been the father of the first one, either.

The last ten years of his life fractured. The five years of grief, the gut-wrenching pain of the funeral, the empty house, the divorce that had cleaved his world in two. And the five years since, the desperate, paranoid flight, protecting the impossible secret sleeping in the next room. All of it, every tear, every sleepless night, every sacrifice… it had all been built on a lie.

He stumbled toward the adjoining room, pushing the door open a crack. In the dim light filtering in from the parking lot, he could see the small lump under the covers of the double bed. Leo was asleep, his breathing soft and even. A five-year-old angel, untroubled by the storm raging inside and out.

Ethan crept closer, his own breathing ragged. He looked down at the boy’s face, a perfect, cherubic porcelain mask in the shadows. He saw his own jawline, his own dark hair. He’d always seen it. Or had he just wanted to? For five years, he had studied this face, cataloging every similarity as proof, as justification for what he had done.

Gently, he reached out and took the boy’s small hand. Leo’s fingers curled instinctively around his. On the boy’s palm was a tiny, pale, crescent-shaped scar, just below the thumb. Identical to the one the first Leo had gotten on a beach trip, the day he’d fallen on a broken seashell. The clinic had even replicated the imperfections. It was a detail that had always brought Ethan a strange, fierce comfort. A tangible link to the past he was so desperate to reclaim.

His gaze fell from the scar on Leo's hand to the faded tattoo on his own forearm—a clumsy, childlike drawing of a rocket ship, the first picture the original Leo had ever given him, immortalized in ink. A permanent reminder of a love he now realized he may have never truly possessed.

The betrayal was a venomous, creeping cold. It wasn't the clinic that had lied. It was Sarah.

His ex-wife. The woman who had wept beside him at the hospital. The woman whose grief had mirrored his own, before it had hardened into a quiet resentment that drove them apart. She had let him believe for fifteen years that they had shared a son. She had let him bury a child that wasn't his.

He pulled his hand back from Leo’s as if burned. Who was this child? This echo of a boy he didn’t even know? He felt a sudden, terrifying distance from the small, sleeping form in the bed. For five years, this boy had been his penance, his redemption, his entire world. Now, he was a stranger. A ghost wearing a familiar face.

No. He couldn't think that. The boy was innocent. He was just a child. A child who loved him, who called him “Daddy.” The programming, the conditioning, whatever the clinic had done, it had worked. The love was real, even if the blood wasn't.

But the rage was real, too. A black, churning tide of it, directed at the one person who held the key. Sarah.

She had rebuilt her life. He’d seen it online, in the brief, painful moments of weakness when he’d searched her name. A new city, a new job as a project manager, a new, tastefully minimalist apartment. She had moved on, burying the past with a pragmatism he had always envied and despised. She had found stability while he had chosen to live in the shadows with their son's ghost.

Only it wasn't their son's ghost. It was someone else's.

He straightened up, a new, terrible resolve hardening in his chest. Paranoia and fear were replaced by a singular, burning need for the truth. He could not spend another second in this limbo, this collapsed reality.

He strode back into the main room, grabbing his weathered jacket from the back of a chair. He fished his keys from the pocket, the metal clinking loudly in the tense silence. He had to go to her. He had to stand on her manicured doorstep and force her to look him in the eye and tell him. He had to know who she had been with. He had to know whose son he had mourned, whose son he had resurrected.

Outside, a clap of thunder rattled the motel’s frame. Ethan glanced back at the bedroom door, a flicker of his fierce, protective instinct flaring through the anger. Leo was safe here. He’d be asleep for hours. This wouldn't take long.

He would drive through the storm, find her, and get the answer. Then he would come back, and he would figure out what to do with the beautiful, five-year-old lie sleeping in his motel room.

Slamming the door behind him, he stepped out into the deluge. The cold rain was a shock, plastering his hair to his skull, but he barely felt it. He was already numb. As he sprinted to his beat-up sedan, the world had narrowed to a single point: Sarah’s new address, three hours away, memorized from a late-night internet search months ago.

He took a breath, tasting the storm and the ruin of his past, and pointed the car into the roaring darkness. He was a ghost driving to confront another, and he knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than the rain, that by morning, nothing would ever be the same again.