Chapter 2 - The Blood That Shouldn’t Exist
Elena grabbed the lamp from the nightstand and moved beside the door.
The lock clicked.
The door opened three inches.
“Don’t scream,” a man whispered.
Elena raised the lamp.
“Give me a reason not to.”
A hand appeared first.
Empty.
Then a thin man in his sixties stepped inside.
Elena recognized him.
Martin Hale.
Former laboratory supervisor at St. Brendan.
He looked twenty years older than when she had last seen him.
He carried a small insulated medical case.
“You said you have the blood.”
“I have something better.”
He locked the door.
Elena did not lower the lamp.
“Start talking.”
Hale opened the case.
Inside was a sealed evidence pouch.
A purple-top blood tube sat within it.
The handwritten label read:
C. RALDI.
Date.
Time.
Collector initials.
E.M.
Elena’s initials.
Her handwriting.
Her breath caught.
“That’s the tube I drew.”
“Yes.”
“How do you have it?”
“I stole it.”
“From whom?”
Hale looked at her.
“Dr. Vale.”
Elena lowered the lamp slightly.
Hale explained.
Seven years earlier, Vale had ordered fertility testing for Cassian.
But the samples sent under Cassian’s name belonged to another man.
Hale had noticed irregularities.
He had said nothing because Vale paid him.
Then the payments became threats.
Years passed.
The records were altered again and again.
When Cassian collapsed at the charity event, Vale had seen an opportunity.
A fresh sample.
A genuine biological sample from Cassian that could expose every previous fraud.
So Vale ordered it destroyed.
Hale didn’t.
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
“Against Vale?”
“Against everyone.”
Elena stared at the tube.
“What happened after I drew it?”
Hale’s face changed.
“You drank something.”
“I know.”
“You were drugged.”
“And Cassian?”
“Already sedated.”
Elena’s skin went cold.
“Why put us in the same room?”
Hale hesitated.
“That’s the part I don’t understand.”
“You understand enough.”
“I know somebody ordered both of you moved upstairs.”
“Who?”
“I never saw them.”
“Male or female?”
“Male voice on the phone.”
“Vale?”
“No.”
That surprised her.
Hale leaned closer.
“Vale was scared that night.”
“Of Cassian?”
“No. Of whoever called him.”
Elena sat slowly.
Her pregnancy was not an accident.
Not in the ordinary sense.
Someone had drugged two people.
Manipulated medical evidence.
Forged logs.
Preserved or stolen biological material.
Then waited.
“But why would anyone want me pregnant?”
Hale looked at her stomach.
“Maybe this was never about you.”
Before Elena could answer, headlights swept across the motel curtains.
Hale went pale.
“You told someone.”
“No.”
A black SUV stopped outside.
Then another.
Hale grabbed the case.
Elena caught his arm.
“Wait.”
Three heavy knocks hit the door.
“Elena.”
Cassian.
She released her breath.
Hale did not.
“That may be worse.”
Cassian entered alone.
His gaze moved from Elena to Hale to the medical case.
“Explain.”
Elena crossed her arms.
“You first.”
Cassian closed the door.
“I didn’t cancel your mother’s payments.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t contact your hospital.”
“I guessed.”
“I also didn’t send you here alone.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You followed me?”
“I had someone follow you.”
“That is not better.”
“It kept you alive.”
Hale interrupted.
“You two can argue after someone stops Dr. Vale.”
Cassian looked at him.
Hale showed him the blood tube.
Cassian stared at his own name written in Elena’s handwriting.
For perhaps the first time in his adult life, Cassian looked genuinely uncertain.
Elena told him everything.
The repeated sample number.
The forged infertility records.
The matching DNA identifier.
The photograph.
Vale.
When she finished, Cassian sat on the edge of the desk.
“My uncle recommended Vale.”
“Vittorio?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After my father died.”
Another thread.
Elena felt it.
“Your father knew about the diagnosis?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he died three weeks before it.”
Hale suddenly looked away.
Elena noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She stepped closer.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Hale rubbed his face.
“Cassian’s father came to the laboratory before he died.”
Cassian stood.
“What did he want?”
“He ordered a private genetic panel.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ran it.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Hale looked frightened.
“I never saw the final result.”
Cassian’s voice dropped.
“Who did?”
“Vale.”
The motel room became very quiet.
Cassian’s father had died in what police called a boating accident.
Three weeks later, Cassian was declared infertile.
Years later, Elena’s father died in a truck crash.
Then she was dragged into Cassian’s world through a debt that should never have existed.
Elena suddenly thought of her father.
“What company owned the cargo my father was hauling when he died?”
Cassian looked at her.
“Why?”
“Answer me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
Cassian called Ezra.
The answer came twelve minutes later.
Raldi Meridian Logistics.
Elena sat down.
“My father was working for you.”
“For a subsidiary.”
“He died carrying your cargo.”
“I didn’t know.”
“What cargo?”
Cassian asked Ezra.
A pause.
Then his expression changed.
“Medical equipment.”
Elena laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
The manifest had been sealed after the crash.
Cassian ordered it retrieved.
By dawn, they had a scanned copy.
Most of the shipment was ordinary.
Hospital equipment.
Refrigeration units.
Diagnostic machines.
But one container had no commercial description.
Only a code.
V-17.
Hale saw it and nearly dropped his coffee.
“You recognize that.”
He shook his head too quickly.
Cassian stepped forward.
Hale backed away.
Elena put herself between them.
“Threatening him won’t improve his memory.”
Cassian’s eyes stayed on Hale.
“No. But fear might.”
Hale finally broke.
“V-17 was Vale’s internal research designation.”
“For what?” Elena asked.
“Reproductive genetics.”
Her stomach tightened.
“What kind?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Tell us what you do know.”
Hale looked at Cassian.
“Your father was funding it.”
Cassian went completely still.
Hale continued.
“Then he tried to shut it down.”
“Why?”
“Because he discovered Vale had moved from fertility research to unauthorized procedures.”
Elena instinctively touched her abdomen.
Cassian saw it.
“What procedures?”
Hale swallowed.
“Embryo manipulation. Gamete preservation. Unapproved insemination trials.”
Elena’s pulse roared in her ears.
“Was I inseminated?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was something done to me while I was unconscious?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were there!”
“I left before you were moved upstairs.”
Cassian slammed his palm against the wall.
Hale flinched.
Elena did not.
She understood Cassian’s anger now.
It was not jealousy.
It was horror.
Someone might have violated both of them.
Cassian looked at her.
“I’ll find out.”
“No.”
His brow tightened.
“We will.”
For the first time since the DNA result, they stood on the same side.
They sent the preserved blood to three independent laboratories under anonymous identifiers.
They also arranged a new paternity test.
This time Elena watched every step.
Cassian’s sample never left her sight.
Neither did hers.
Forty-eight hours later, Camille called.
“Elena, I have the result.”
She put the phone on speaker.
Cassian stood beside her.
Camille inhaled.
“Cassian is the father.”
Neither spoke.
“Probability greater than 99.99 percent.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Cassian sat down.
The first DNA report had been fabricated.
The pregnancy was biologically possible.
But the question of consent remained.
Cassian looked sick.
“If someone used my stored material—”
“We don’t know that.”
“You woke beside me.”
“We don’t know what happened.”
“I should have investigated.”
“You were unconscious too.”
“I brought you into this house.”
“Six weeks afterward.”
“Because I recognized your name.”
Elena stared at him.
“What?”
Cassian looked toward the window.
“My father left a sealed instruction with Ezra. It contained three names. Yours was one.”
Elena stopped breathing.
“My name?”
“Yes.”
“Before you met me?”
“Yes.”
“How long before?”
“Four years.”
The year her father died.
Elena’s voice became a whisper.
“What were the other two names?”
“One was Warren Vale.”
“And the third?”
Cassian hesitated.
“Your father.”
Elena felt the room tilt.
Her father and Cassian’s father had known each other.
Her father’s debt had brought her into the marriage.
Her mother’s care had made refusal impossible.
Nothing about their meeting was random.
Then Cassian’s phone rang.
Ezra.
Cassian answered.
He listened.
His face hardened.
“What happened?”
Elena waited.
Cassian ended the call.
“Hale’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“The safe house is empty.”
“Did he run?”
Cassian shook his head.
“There’s blood.”
Elena grabbed her coat.
They reached the safe house twenty minutes later.
The front door stood open.
One chair had been overturned.
A thin line of blood crossed the floor.
On the wall, someone had written three numbers.
Elena stared.
Cassian found a recorder beneath the table.
One audio file remained.
He pressed play.
Hale’s frightened voice filled the room.
“If anything happens to me, find Maryanne’s old nursing records. Elena’s mother remembers more than anyone thinks. And whatever you do, don’t let Vale learn that she still has—”
The recording cut off.
Elena’s phone rang.
Elm Grove Nursing Center.
She answered.
A nurse was crying.
“Elena, someone came for your mother.”
Her blood turned cold.
“Who?”
“They had transfer papers.”
“Where did they take her?”
“We don’t know.”
Elena ran for the door.
Then the nurse said one more thing.
“Your mother became completely lucid before they left.”
Elena stopped.
“What did she say?”
The nurse whispered the words.
May you like
“She said Cassian Raldi’s father was murdered.”
Then the line went dead.
