Chapter 11 - The daughter he chose to punish
The first report belonged to Lila.
99.99%.
Marcus was her biological father.
The second belonged to Chloe.
0%.
My world tilted.
“No.”
I heard my own voice from far away.
Marcus and I had conceived naturally.
Or so I believed.
I had never used donor sperm.
Never undergone IVF.
Nothing.
I remembered the month Chloe was conceived.
We had been trying for eighteen months.
I had undergone a diagnostic procedure.
My fertility specialist suggested one medicated cycle.
No insemination.
At least, that was what I was told.
Dr. Nina Cole’s name appeared in the old clinic paperwork as a consulting physician.
My skin went cold.
Investigators later confirmed the DNA report’s authenticity only after proper testing.
Until then, it was a document.
Potentially forged like everything else.
But Marcus had behaved as though it mattered.
Why?
Chloe had always been treated differently from Lila.
Not publicly.
Privately.
Punished more.
Controlled more.
Why would he raise a child he believed wasn’t biologically his?
Appearance.
Marriage.
Reputation.
And perhaps because leaving me would expose his affair.
Then another possibility.
Maybe he didn’t know until years later.
Victoria provided the timeline.
Marcus requested Chloe’s DNA test when she was three.
After he noticed her blood type during a medical emergency.
Result indicated exclusion.
Instead of asking me?
He accused no one.
He built a case.
He had already been cheating.
Now he had a justification he could privately feed himself.
Elena betrayed me first.
Even though I hadn’t.
Then Dr. Nina finally confessed something.
During my medicated fertility cycle, the clinic had experienced a specimen labeling error.
I stared.
“What specimen?”
She shook her head.
“I wasn’t the treating physician then.”
“But you knew?”
“Later.”
The clinic had quietly investigated whether donor material was accidentally used in several patients.
No definitive proof at the time.
Marcus discovered internal records through Nina years later.
He believed Chloe might have been conceived using donor sperm without my knowledge.
That possibility had been hidden from me.
I felt sick.
Not because Chloe might not share Marcus’s DNA.
She was my daughter.
Nothing touched that.
But because yet another institution had built a silence around my body.
Nina whispered:
“Marcus threatened to expose the clinic unless I helped him.”
There.
Another chain.
Then I asked the only question that mattered.
“Did he punish Chloe because he thought she wasn’t his?”
Nobody answered.
Victoria cried.
Nina looked away.
That was answer enough emotionally, though not legally.
Then police found a voice recording on Marcus’s phone backup.
Victoria:
“She’s a child.”
Marcus:
“She’s Elena’s problem.”
Victoria:
“You raised her.”
Marcus:
“Because walking away would cost me everything.”
Then:
“Lila is mine. Chloe is leverage.”
I stopped breathing.
My daughter had spent five years trying to earn love from a man who had reduced her to a bargaining chip.
And suddenly, I no longer cared who Chloe’s biological father was.
I cared who had been her father in practice.
May you like
The answer was worse.
No one.
