"Mason, you're in charge. No opening the door for anyone."
Chloe gave her son a firm look before grabbing her car keys. She had secured the blood sample from the stranger and taken cheek swabs from her sleeping children. Now, she was driving to a discreet, high-end medical lab on the other side of town, the kind that valued privacy above all else.
She handed the samples to a technician, the vials feeling impossibly heavy in her hand.
"I need a rush paternity test," she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her gut. "Start with a preliminary blood type compatibility. I need those results today."
She paid the exorbitant rush fee without a second thought. The cost was nothing compared to the price of not knowing.
The drive home was a blur. Her mind kept replaying the fragmented memories of that night, searching for a face, a voice, anything. But there was only darkness, fear, and the phantom sensation of teeth sinking into flesh.
Back in the clinic, the man was still unconscious, his breathing deep and even. His vital signs were stable on the monitor. She changed his IV bag, her fingers brushing against his skin. She couldn't stop herself from studying his face again, tracing the lines of it with her eyes, comparing them to the image of Mason she held in her mind. The similarity was a physical ache in her chest.
The hours crawled by. Each ring of her phone made her jump. She tried to distract herself, playing a board game with the kids, reading them stories, but her mind was elsewhere, waiting.
Finally, late in the afternoon, the call came.
"Ms. Foster? We have your preliminary results ready."
Her heart leaped into her throat. "I'm on my way."
She broke every speed limit getting back to the lab. A technician handed her a sealed envelope. She didn't even wait to get back to the house. She tore it open in the car, her hands shaking as she pulled out the single sheet of paper and unfolded it on the passenger seat.
It was a simple chart.
Child 1 (Mason Foster): Blood Type A
Child 2 (Miles Foster): Blood Type O
Child 3 (Lily Foster): Blood Type A
Her eyes scanned down to the last line.
Potential Father (John Doe): Blood Type B
Chloe stared at the letter. B.
It took a moment for the full implication to sink in. Her own blood type was A. Basic genetics, the kind they teach in high school biology, screamed the answer at her. Two parents with A and O blood types could have children with A or O blood. They could never, under any circumstances, have a child with B blood.
It was scientifically impossible.
He wasn't their father.
The conclusion was so stark, so absolute, it felt like a physical blow. A wave of something cold and hollow washed over her. Disappointment. It was sharp and surprisingly painful. A small, secret part of her had been hoping.
But right behind the disappointment came a different feeling: immense, bone-deep relief.
If he wasn't their father, then the bite mark was a one-in-a-billion coincidence. The resemblance was a trick of the light, a projection of her own desperate desire for answers. He was just a stranger, a patient. The ghosts of her past could remain buried.
She picked up her phone and called the lab. "This is Chloe Foster. You can cancel the full DNA sequence comparison. It's no longer necessary."
When she got home, the kids swarmed her at the door.
"What did it say, Mom?" Mason asked, his eyes searching hers. "Is he our dad?"
Chloe knelt, pulling them into a hug. She smoothed Mason's hair, her heart aching for the hope she was about to extinguish. "No, sweetie, he's not," she said gently. "The blood types don't match. It's impossible. He's just a patient I saved."
She saw the flicker of disappointment in their eyes, especially Miles and Lily's. But Mason, ever the pragmatist, just nodded slowly, accepting the scientific fact.
A weight she hadn't even realized she was carrying lifted from her shoulders. Her entire demeanor towards the man on the table changed. The intense, personal fear was gone, replaced by professional concern. He was no longer a mystery tied to her trauma; he was a medical case, a problem to be solved. She began mapping out a treatment plan for his nerve damage, her mind clear and focused.
That night, his temperature spiked. He grew restless, muttering deliriously. Chloe stayed by his side, sponging his forehead with a cool cloth, administering medication. In his fevered ramblings, she thought she heard a name, something whispered and indistinct, but it was lost in a groan of pain.
By morning, the fever had broken. He was stable again.
Feeling drained, Chloe decided she needed a break, a return to normalcy. She left the kids with a tablet and a promise of pizza for dinner and drove to a large department store in the next town over. She needed to buy clothes for the kids, toiletries, and some basic items for her unexpected, long-term patient.
She was wandering through the home goods section when her eyes were drawn to a wall of massive flat-screen televisions, all tuned to the same breaking news channel.
The headline scrolled across the bottom of the screen: "STERLING ENTERPRISES CEO AIDAN STERLING INVOLVED IN SERIOUS ACCIDENT, REMAINS MISSING."
The anchor's voice cut through the store's ambient noise. "Authorities are searching for Sterling, six feet one, with dark hair and a distinctive jawline. He was last seen wearing a tailored navy suit. No recent photographs have been released at this time. Foul play has not been ruled out."
Chloe stopped walking. A pair of bath towels dangled forgotten in her hand.
Dark hair. Strong jaw. Tall. The man in her clinic fit every detail. But that could be a coincidence... couldn't it?
She glanced back at the screen, hoping for a picture, some definitive proof. But there was only the same headline and a generic graphic of the Sterling Enterprises logo.
Her heart began to beat a little faster. The stranger she had pulled from the wreckage, the man she had been nursing back to health in her own home, might be a billionaire CEO. And someone might have wanted him dead.
She stood there for a long moment, the cheerful department store music suddenly feeling surreal. Then, slowly, she placed the towels back on the shelf. The seed of suspicion had been planted. She would have to watch him more carefully.
