Chapter 13 - THE FATHERS’ SINEthan stepped backward.
“That’s impossible.”
Ryan smiled.
“Your father hated Margaret.”
“My father died thirteen years ago.”
“Elena died twelve years ago.”
Ethan stopped.
Dates.
They didn’t match.
Ryan laughed.
“Exactly.”
Marcus punched him.
The detective shouted.
“Enough!”
Ryan collapsed against the police car.
Ethan’s heart pounded.
“My father was dead.”
Ryan spat blood.
“I said your father.”
The words hung there.
Then Ethan understood.
“No.”
Marcus looked confused.
Lena whispered, “What?”
Ethan’s hands started shaking.
The man who raised Ethan was Robert Cole.
But Robert had told him once, during a drunken argument, that Ethan was not biologically his.
Ethan had never searched for his real father.
Claire knew.
They had discussed it exactly once.
Then buried it.
Ryan smiled.
“Ask Daniel Hart.”
Ethan’s stomach dropped.
Lena stared at him.
“No.”
Daniel had a son?
Or another child?
Ethan couldn’t breathe.
Hospital DNA records suddenly made terrible sense.
Claire had tested Noah.
Not only for her own ancestry.
For Ethan’s.
His phone rang.
The hospital.
Daniel Hart was awake.
They reached him an hour later.
Daniel looked twenty years older.
Lena entered first.
He began crying.
She did not hug him.
Not yet.
Ethan stood near the bed.
“Who is my biological father?”
Daniel looked at him.
Long silence.
Then he whispered, “Me.”
Lena sat down hard.
Ethan gripped the bed rail.
“No.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Robert Cole couldn’t have children. His wife, Anne, had an affair with me.”
Ethan felt sick.
“So Claire was…”
“Your half sister?”
Daniel shook his head quickly.
“No.”
Lena exhaled.
Daniel continued.
“Claire and Lena were my nieces.”
Everyone froze.
Lena whispered, “Marco said you were our father.”
“Marco was protecting Elena.”
Daniel began crying.
“My younger brother, David Hart, was your father.”
Everything shifted again.
Daniel explained.
David loved Elena.
Margaret despised Elena.
When David died in a motorcycle crash before the twins were born, the Hart family panicked.
Daniel agreed to pose as the father on private paperwork to protect David’s inheritance from creditors.
Margaret used the confusion to take Lucia.
“Then Ethan?” Lena asked.
Daniel looked at him.
“You are my son.”
Not Claire’s sibling.
Claire’s cousin.
Ethan sat down.
Every truth created another secret.
“Why did Claire test Noah?”
“She discovered our connection.”
Daniel looked ashamed.
“She wanted to know whether marrying you had created any genetic risk.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
“That’s why she was scared to tell me.”
“Yes.”
Lena asked the question Ethan couldn’t.
“Did you kill my mother?”
Daniel looked horrified.
“No.”
“Ryan said Ethan’s biological father did.”
“He lied.”
“Why?”
“Because Ryan is protecting someone.”
“Who?”
Daniel looked toward the hospital door.
“You still think Margaret is the head of this family.”
He shook his head.
“She never was.”
Ethan leaned closer.
“Who was?”
Daniel whispered one name.
“Margaret’s husband.”
Charles Bennett.
Claire’s adoptive father.
May you like
A man who had comforted Ethan at Claire’s funeral.
A man currently staying inside Ethan’s home with Noah’s nursery key.
