Chapter 8 - THE ECHO IN THE BLOOD
The sterile hallway felt like a vacuum. All the air was sucked out of the room.
I stared at the surgeon, my arm still held out, my sleeve rolled up.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, my voice cracking. “He has my eyes. He looks exactly like me.”
“He is a fraternal twin, Julian,” the doctor explained quickly, glancing nervously at Clara. “Superfecundation. It’s rare, but it happens. Sam is a perfect genetic match to you. But Leo… Leo has a different father.”
I turned slowly to look at Clara.
She wasn't hiding. She wasn't shrinking away. She stood tall, her eyes red and exhausted, but fiercely defiant.
“Is it true?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Yes,” Clara said. Her voice didn't waver. “When you left me four years ago, Julian… when you told me I was suffocating you, when you chose Tokyo over my birthday… we broke up for two months. You remember?”
I remembered. I had left her in our apartment, packed my bags, and told her I needed a break to focus on the merger.
“I was broken, Julian,” Clara said, tears streaming down her face again. “I went out one night. I just wanted to feel something other than the pain of you leaving me. It was a mistake. One night. And when you came back a month later, begging for my forgiveness, I took you back. Because I loved you.”
She looked down at the floor. “When I got pregnant, I didn't know. I swear to you, I didn't know until the doctor told me my mother’s genetic heart defect—the one my own brother died from—had been passed to one of the twins. The other man… he had the recessive gene. You didn't.”
“So you lied to me?” I asked, stepping back.
“I was terrified!” Clara cried out. “Your mother found out about the defect. She told me she would ruin me. She told me you would hate me. She said you would take Sam and throw Leo away because he wasn't yours and he was broken!”
I looked at the small boy in my arms. Sam. My son.
And then I looked down the hallway, where the nurses were wheeling Leo—the boy with my eyes, the boy I had claimed in my heart the second I saw him on that subway platform.
He wasn't my blood.
But my mother had used him as a pawn. She had threatened a child’s life to secure a business deal.
“We are losing time!” the surgeon shouted. “If we don't get O-negative blood from a family member, the boy dies in the next twenty minutes.”
Clara stepped forward, rolling up her sleeve. “I’m O-negative. I’m his mother. Take mine.”
The doctor shook his head. “You’re anemic, Clara. You haven't eaten or slept in days. Taking a full pint from you for the bypass machine will send you into shock. It could kill you.”
“I don't care!” Clara screamed, grabbing the doctor’s scrubs. “Take it! Take my blood, save my son!”
“I’ll do it,” a new voice echoed down the hallway.
We all turned.
Walking down the sterile corridor, wearing a soaked designer trench coat, was my mother, Victoria.
May you like
She looked at Clara, then at the doctor, and finally at me.
“I am O-negative,” Victoria said quietly, pulling off her gloves. “And I am Julian’s mother. By law, Julian claimed paternity when he authorized the trust. That makes me his grandmother.”
