The worst thoughts raced through my mind as Grandpa Bruno stared at my newborn daughter, Brucie. Her left eye was blue and her right brown.
“Is Luke related to me?” I asked.
“No,” Grandpa said quickly. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”
He locked every door and closed the curtains before revealing that Luke Sterling’s real name was Lucas Bruno Vale—and that Lucas was his son.
I struggled to understand. Grandpa had always said my mother, Evelyn, was his only child.
But he explained that, at twenty-two, he had been engaged to Marianne Vale.
Her wealthy family despised him, but Marianne became pregnant and gave birth to Lucas, who had the same mismatched eyes as Brucie.
Soon afterward, Marianne disappeared with their son.
Grandpa searched for years until he received a death certificate claiming seven-year-old Lucas and his mother had died in a boating accident.
Their bodies were never recovered.
From a hidden compartment, Grandpa produced an old photograph. The boy standing beside him and Marianne looked exactly like Luke.
“Why didn’t you recognize his name?” I demanded.
“Because I buried a child named Lucas Vale thirty years ago. You told me you were dating Luke Sterling.”
Sterling had been Marianne’s maiden name.
Then I remembered telling Luke that Grandpa Bruno had raised me.
Luke had briefly frozen when he heard the name. I had also shown him a photograph of my parents, David and Evelyn Mercer.
“He knew,” Grandpa whispered.
But there was another secret: Evelyn was not Grandpa’s biological daughter.
She had come to him at twelve after her father, Daniel Mercer, became involved with dangerous criminals.
Daniel asked Grandpa to hide her, then disappeared.
Evelyn remained with Bruno and eventually called him Dad.
After my parents died when I was four, Grandpa raised me without revealing the truth.
He admitted he had also concealed doubts about my parents’ fatal car crash.
Grandpa showed me a photograph taken shortly before their deaths.
Daniel Mercer—my supposedly deceased biological grandfather—stood in the background.
Then he handed me a letter my mother had written three days before the crash.
She warned that Daniel had returned and claimed the Sterlings had found him.
She instructed Bruno to protect me, keep me away from Daniel, and never let Marianne Sterling discover that I had survived.
Marianne had not simply been Grandpa’s former fiancée. She had been Daniel’s criminal partner.
Daniel handled transportation, while Marianne’s family used legitimate businesses to conceal illegal money.
Eventually, Marianne stole from their organization and staged the boating accident before disappearing with Lucas.
That meant Luke had survived and later entered my life knowing who Grandpa was.
Perhaps he vanished after my pregnancy because Brucie’s distinctive eyes could expose his identity and the Sterling family’s secrets.
Grandpa assured me Luke and I were not blood relatives because Evelyn was Daniel’s biological daughter, not his.
“At least, that’s what I always believed,” he added.
Before he could explain, headlights crossed the curtains.
Grandpa retrieved a handgun as someone knocked.
It was a courier carrying an envelope addressed to me at Grandpa’s home, although almost nobody knew I was there.
Inside were a USB drive, a DNA report, and a letter written by Luke.
He apologized for disappearing and confirmed that he had been born Lucas Vale.
He claimed he had not known my identity when we met. After discovering my connection to Bruno, he secretly ordered a DNA test to determine whether we were related.
We were not.
But Luke had also redirected the sample from an ancestry kit I believed had been lost.
He wrote that my DNA contained a secret Grandpa had hidden from me throughout my life.
The laboratory report listed two names, but both had been blacked out. One belonged to me.
“Clover, don’t,” Grandpa whispered.
I unfolded the final page. I could not understand the scientific tables, but the conclusion was unmistakable:
Probability of biological parentage: 99.9987%.
