Chapter 3 - The Enemy at the Door“You’ve got five seconds to explain why I shouldn't call the police right now, Waylon,” I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “You put your hands on my mother today. You have a lot of nerve showing up outside my home.”
“I know I do,” Waylon replied, his voice strained through the speaker. “And I don't blame you for wanting to throw me off this property. But what happened at that hotel today... it wasn't just about Brianna being petty. It was a calculated smokescreen. Brandon and my sister have been playing you for two years, Naomi. If you don’t let me up here in the next two minutes, you’re going to lose everything your grandmother left you before you even realize what hit you.”
My breath hitched.
My grandmother’s legacy.
Before she passed away, my grandmother had left me a modest commercial property downtown—a historic two-story brick building housing a bakery and several upper-floor loft apartments. When Brandon and I got engaged, he had insisted on helping me manage the legal paperwork, claiming that as an up-and-coming real estate developer, he could protect the asset from predatory municipal tax hikes. I had trusted him implicitly. I had signed a stack of authorization forms over dinner one night without reading every line of the dense legal jargon.
“Stay right where you are,” I whispered. “Don’t move.”
I hung up, walked quickly to the bathroom door, and whispered to Mom that I needed to check on a delivery downstairs.
I unlocked our front door, descended the concrete stairwell of the apartment complex, and pulled open the heavy glass lobby door.
Parked at the curb in the pouring rain was Waylon’s mud-spattered Ford pickup truck. The hazard lights were blinking rhythmically. As I approached through the downpour, the passenger door clicked open.
I climbed inside, the interior smelling faintly of stale coffee and wet leather. Waylon sat behind the steering wheel, his knuckles gripping the plastic rim so tight they were white. He looked disheveled—his groomsman suit jacket was gone, his tie was ripped off, and a dark purple bruise was forming along his jawline where I had shoved him off my mother.
“Well?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest. “Talk.”
Waylon turned his head, his dark eyes meeting mine with a heavy, haunted expression.
“You think Brianna just happened to ruin your mother’s hair as a prank?” Waylon let out a bitter, humorless laugh. “Naomi, that wasn't a bad haircut. That was a forensic extraction.”
I stared at him, feeling a cold shiver crawl down my spine. “What are you talking about?”
“Brianna didn't just hack at her hair for fun,” Waylon said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Brandon paid her five thousand dollars to get a viable hair-follicle DNA sample from your mother.”
The world inside the truck seemed to stop spinning.
“A DNA sample?” I repeated, my voice barely a squeak. “Why on earth would Brandon need a DNA sample from my mother?”
Waylon reached into the pocket of his dress shirt, pulled out a folded manila envelope, and tossed it onto my lap.
“Open it,” he instructed.
With trembling fingers, I slid the metal clasp open and pulled out a stack of printed documents. The top page bore the letterhead of a private genetic profiling and paternity verification lab in San Francisco.
My eyes scanned the lines of medical terminology until they landed on the bold summary section at the bottom:
BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP PROBABILITY: MOTHER-DAUGHTER. 99.99%.ADDITIONAL MATERNAL LINEAGE SCREENING: DISCREPANCY DETECTED.
I looked up at Waylon, completely uncomprehending. “I am my mother’s daughter. Everyone knows that. What is this?”
“Look at the second page, Naomi,” Waylon said grimly.
I flipped the page. There was a detailed hereditary marker breakdown comparing my DNA sequence with Miriam’s. But highlighted in yellow marker was a secondary comparison—a legal adoption registry match cross-referenced against a closed-file birth record from St. Jude’s Hospital in Sacramento, dating back twenty-eight years.
My breath caught in my throat as I read the names printed on the court-sealed document.
My mother, Miriam, had never given birth to me.
May you like
According to the legal decree, I had been legally adopted at three days old. But that wasn't the most shocking part. The birth mother listed on the sealed adoption papers wasn't a stranger.
It was Eleanor Blackwood—Brandon’s mother.
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