At Her Sister’s Wedding, My Best Friend Caught the Bouquet… Then Walked Straight to My Table!
Chapter 8
The DNA test took three days.
Those three days felt endless.
Claire stopped speaking to almost everyone.
Emily barely slept.
Sophie stayed beside them.
When the results finally arrived, Emily opened the email.
She read the first line.
Then stopped.
Claire grabbed her hand.
“What?”
Emily looked at her.
“It’s Michael.”
Claire’s eyes filled with tears.
“Michael Reed was my biological father.”
Sophie sat down.
“That means…”
Emily nodded.
“You’re my half-sister.”
Claire stared at the floor.
“And Sophie?”
Sophie shook her head.
“That’s not all.”
The DNA test also showed that Sophie and Claire were not related.
Meaning Michael had not been Sophie’s biological father.
Something was still wrong.
They went to Michael’s old records.
Sophie found the answer in an old diary.
Michael had written about a baby.
Not Claire.
Another baby.
A boy.
The boy had been born the same week.
His name was never recorded.
Emily looked at Sophie.
“Why would Michael hide a son?”
Sophie turned the page.
One sentence.
If the boy survives, Victor will look for him.
The next page was missing.
Claire whispered:
“Where is the boy now?”
Nobody knew.
Then Emily remembered the wedding.
The bouquets.
The man from the photograph.
The unknown person Victor feared.
Maybe the boy had grown up.
Maybe he was somewhere close.
Sophie found another clue.
A payment made twenty years earlier.
To a private adoption agency.
Recipient:
Daniel Hale.
Emily’s heart stopped.
“Daniel?”
Claire’s husband.
Sophie nodded.
“He’s Victor’s son.”
Claire stared.
“No.”
“Maybe Daniel isn’t involved.”
“But why would his father pay an adoption agency?”
Emily looked at the records.
“Because the child was adopted.”
They confronted Daniel.
He looked confused.
“My father adopted someone?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel sat down.
Then he remembered.
“There was a boy.”
Emily stared.
“Where?”
“My father said the boy was connected to the accident.”
“What happened to him?”
Daniel shook his head.
“He disappeared.”
“Did you know him?”
“When we were kids.”
“Name?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Ben.”
The room went silent.
“Ben what?”
“Ben Carter.”
Emily froze.
Her last name.
Her family name.
But she had never known a Ben Carter.
Daniel continued.
“My father said Ben wasn’t supposed to survive.”
Sophie whispered:
“Survive what?”
Daniel looked terrified.
“The accident.”
Emily’s blood ran cold.
The worker who died that night had a son.
That son survived.
Victor had hidden him.
And the entire family had spent twenty years protecting him.
But then why had Claire been part of the secret?
Because Michael had discovered that the boy had witnessed the accident.
Claire had been used to protect him.
She had been the legal cover.
A baby whose identity would distract investigators from the missing witness.
Emily suddenly understood.
“Our parents didn’t separate because of an affair.”
“No,” Sophie said.
“They separated because they were protecting a child.”
Claire looked at them.
“Me?”
Emily shook her head.
“No.”
She opened the final page of Michael’s diary.
A single sentence remained.
Claire is the decoy. Ben is the witness.
