Chapter 7 - The truth about Leo’s birth
“No.”
The word came automatically.
Marco and I had undergone IVF.
The embryos were created using my eggs and Marco’s sperm.
Rachel carried the pregnancy.
At least, that was what every record said.
I looked at Marco.
“What did you discover?”
He sat down.
For the first time that afternoon, he looked genuinely frightened.
“Four months ago.”
“What?”
“I did one of those ancestry tests.”
My stomach turned.
“Without telling me?”
“It was a joke.”
“Nothing about this is funny.”
“The results didn’t make sense.”
He had tested Leo afterward.
Privately.
The result excluded Marco as Leo’s biological father.
I felt the floor shift.
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought you cheated.”
“With our gestational carrier?”
He looked ashamed.
Then he contacted the fertility clinic.
Records were incomplete.
The clinic had changed ownership twice.
One embryology technician had died.
Another refused to discuss old cases without legal authorization.
Instead of telling me, Marco began investigating alone.
Then Valerie found out.
She had been accessing his emails while working for me.
That was the real reason she had copied company files.
She discovered Marco’s panic.
And turned it into opportunity.
But something still didn’t fit.
“If you believed Leo wasn’t yours, why claim Valerie was his mother?”
Marco looked at the floor.
Valerie answered.
“Because he needed a story.”
A story that made me the villain.
A story explaining irregular birth records without revealing Marco had concealed the DNA result.
A story that could pressure me into signing away temporary corporate control.
I looked at Marco.
“You were going to take my company because you discovered a fertility-clinic discrepancy?”
“I was protecting myself.”
“From what?”
He exploded.
“From finding out you built our entire marriage on a lie!”
I slapped the desk with my palm.
“I DIDN’T KNOW!”
The room went silent.
Then a tiny voice came from the doorway.
“Mommy?”
Leo.
My heart shattered.
He had heard us.
I rushed toward him.
He looked frightened.
“Is Daddy not my daddy?”
Marco looked away.
I crouched.
“Listen to me.”
I held his face gently.
“Whatever adults discover about biology changes absolutely nothing about how much you are loved.”
“Am I still your baby?”
“Forever.”
He hugged me.
Over his shoulder, I stared at Marco.
He had turned our child’s identity into a weapon.
Whatever happened next, I would never forgive that.
Then Megan’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her expression hardened.
“Andrea.”
“What?”
“The clinic responded to our emergency preservation request.”
“And?”
“They found an archived incident report from the day your embryo transfer material was prepared.”
I stood.
“What incident?”
She looked at Leo.
May you like
Then lowered her voice.
“A chain-of-custody breach.”
