CHAPTER 2: THE DNA RESULTS
Three days later, the envelope arrived.
It sat on Stellan Cross's desk like a loaded weapon.
He stared at it for nearly an hour before finally opening it.
The room was silent except for the ticking of an antique clock.
Then his eyes landed on a single sentence.
Probability of paternity: 99.9998%.
For a moment, the most feared man in Chicago forgot how to breathe.
Wren was his daughter.
The baby who smiled at him.
The baby who somehow trusted him instantly.
His daughter.
A memory returned with brutal clarity.
One year earlier.
A rainstorm.
A woman stranded beside a broken-down car outside the city.
Nora.
A single night neither of them had expected.
And by morning, Stellan had vanished.
Not because he wanted to.
Because someone had tried to kill him.
His security team had rushed him underground before dawn.
He never learned Nora's full name.
Never knew she was pregnant.
Across the room, Wren sat on the floor playing with wooden blocks.
She looked up.
Gray eyes.
His eyes.
The realization hit like a freight train.
But before he could tell Nora the truth, another file slipped from the DNA envelope.
A confidential hospital report.
A report that should never have been attached.
Stellan frowned.
Then he read the first page.
His expression turned cold.
Very cold.
Because buried in the report was evidence that several newborns had been secretly switched at birth over the last decade.
The names involved included judges.
Politicians.
And members of Chicago's most powerful crime families.
Someone had been manipulating bloodlines.
And someone had already murdered three people to keep the secret buried.
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At the bottom of the page was a handwritten note.
"If you are reading this, they know about the child."
