Chapter 9 - The Embryo That Never Belonged to My Parents
Lucia could barely speak.
“The embryo wasn’t ours.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
I stared at him.
“What?”
My mother continued.
“Not biologically.”
The fertility clinic had made a mistake.
Or what we were told was a mistake.
Twenty-eight years ago, embryos were mixed between two patients.
Lucia carried me.
But genetically—
I was not Lucia and Gabriel’s biological child.
The room vanished beneath me.
“No.”
Lucia reached toward me.
“You are my daughter.”
I stepped backward.
“Who are my biological parents?”
Anthony answered.
“Me.”
Everything stopped.
Matteo stared at his father.
“What?”
Anthony looked almost proud.
“The embryo implanted into Lucia carried my genetics.”
I felt sick.
“And?”
“The egg donor was Helena.”
Victor made a strangled sound.
No.
That would make Helena—
my biological mother.
And Anthony—
my biological father.
Victor—
my half-brother.
My husband.
The world tilted.
Dr. Patel moved quickly toward me.
“Sit.”
I couldn’t.
“No.”
Anthony continued like this was a board meeting.
“The embryo mix-up was discovered after implantation.”
Lucia and Gabriel chose to keep the pregnancy.
They loved me.
Raised me.
But Anthony learned the truth.
Helena did too.
That changed everything.
Helena had been young then.
Twenty-one.
Her eggs had been retrieved during fertility treatment before she married Raul.
Anthony had secretly used them in a private IVF arrangement with another surrogate plan.
Why?
He wanted another heir.
One outside his marriage.
The embryos were mishandled.
One ended up with Lucia.
Me.
I laughed because madness had become easier than crying.
“So Victor married his sister?”
“Half-sister,” Anthony corrected.
Matteo hit him.
One punch.
Controlled.
Anthony fell back into the chair.
Nobody stopped Matteo.
Then Anthony smiled through a split lip.
“At least you still have courage.”
I wanted to scream.
Victor looked devastated.
“Did Mother know?”
“Yes.”
“Before we married?”
“Yes.”
Victor turned away and vomited into a trash bin.
Even after everything he had done, I felt the horror.
Helena knowingly arranged her son’s marriage to her biological daughter.
Why?
Trust access.
Power.
Bloodline consolidation.
Nothing else mattered to her.
Then I grabbed the paternity report.
If the fetus came from a frozen embryo—
whose embryo?
Anthony looked at my stomach.
“Not Lucia’s.”
I stopped breathing.
Helena had used a second embryo.
From the same batch.
Genetically—
Anthony and Helena again.
That meant the baby I carried was genetically my full sibling.
And Victor’s half-sibling.
Not Victor’s child.
The marriage had been engineered to make the baby legally appear Serrano while biologically DeLuca.
An heir connecting both families through paperwork, not genetics.
Anthony called it elegant.
I called it monstrous.
Then Lucia said:
“There were three embryos.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What?”
She remembered the fertility paperwork.
Three embryos documented.
One implanted into her.
One supposedly destroyed.
One missing.
Anthony’s face changed.
First time.
He didn’t know.
“Where is the third?”
Lucia shook her head.
Then Gabriel spoke.
“I know.”
Of course he did.
He had taken it.
Twenty-two years ago, after Lucia disappeared, Gabriel stole the remaining embryo from storage.
Not physically himself.
He paid a technician.
Why?
“To keep Anthony from creating another heir.”
“What happened to it?”
Gabriel looked at Matteo.
Then toward the warehouse doors.
“I gave it to someone I trusted.”
“Who?”
A woman stepped inside.
Sixty-ish.
Black coat.
Gray hair.
Matteo froze.
“Aunt Teresa?”
Anthony stood.
“No.”
Teresa DeLuca.
Anthony’s younger sister.
She had supposedly moved to Italy decades earlier.
She looked at me.
Then said:
“I carried the third embryo.”
My heart stopped.
“And the child?”
She looked toward Matteo.
“Has been standing beside Elena this entire time.”
Everyone turned.
May you like
At Matteo.
He went white.
