CHAPTER 4 – DNA Doesn't Lie… But Someone Does
None of them slept.
By sunrise, trust had completely disappeared.
Michael secretly collected hair from Daniel's comb.
Emily stole one of Michael's coffee cups.
Daniel bribed a laboratory technician to run confidential DNA tests.
Within forty-eight hours...
The results arrived.
Daniel opened the envelope with trembling hands.
Then his face turned white.
"No..."
"It can't be."
Across town...
Emily received her own report.
She nearly collapsed.
The reports showed something impossible.
Daniel and Michael were full brothers.
Emily was Richard Whitmore's biological daughter.
Yet...
The three siblings shared NO biological relationship with each other.
The results contradicted decades of family history.
Someone had manipulated birth records.
Or...
The DNA reports had been switched.
Just as panic spread through the family...
Attorney James Holloway called an emergency meeting.
"I've received instructions your father wanted delivered only after the DNA tests."
Daniel stood.
"You knew about this?"
James nodded quietly.
Richard predicted everything.
The lawyer placed an old leather journal onto the table.
"This belonged to your mother."
Inside the first page was a single sentence written in faded ink:
'If my children ever fight over money... tell them to find the child who disappeared the night of the fire.'
Emily looked up, confused.
"What fire?"
James slowly closed the journal.
"The fire that killed your mother..."
"...never happened the way the newspapers reported."
At that exact moment...
The mansion's front door creaked open.
An elderly woman stepped inside carrying an old photograph.
Her eyes locked onto the three stunned siblings.
Then she quietly whispered:
May you like
"I've spent thirty-two years looking for Richard's missing child."
TO BE CONTINUED...
