Page 32 of Hell of a Mess
Jesus Christ, what had the brainy little bastard done?
“It did…come back with something. I hadn’t told you I was doing it because it was a long shot.”
“What did you do?” Linc asked, growing impatient.
Burl swallowed again. “I sent her DNA to test against all the DNA we have on file ourselves. Not the public system.”
Linc looked as fucking confused as I was.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Burl adjusted his collar. “It—well, I sent it out to test against everyone’s DNA that I’ve ever collected for the family,” he began. “And the DNA of the family.” He said that last part slowly and hesitantly.
I stilled. What?
“Are you telling me that there was a match?” Linc demanded.
Burl nodded.
“It’s probably someone in her family. If Thaddeus works with her father, then we are bound to have someone related to her in our system.”
Burl now looked slightly ill. “Yes, well, that isn’t what I am trying to say,” he replied. “Her DNA made a match, but it wasn’t with someone…outside the family.”
I heard a roar in my ears as I stared at the man, waiting for him to say more. What the actual fuck?!
“Who?!” Linc’s demand bordered on a shout.
Burl glanced at Mal again.
“Her DNA is a fifty percent match with Mal’s. Making the probability of him being her father ninety-nine-point-nine percent. Indicating without a doubt that Mal is her biological father. And before you ask me to test it again for a mistake, her match with Locke is twenty-eight percent, and her match with Gathe is twenty-four, making them both her half siblings.” Burl held out papers in his grip toward Linc.
For the first time in my life, I was fucking speechless. My eyes darted toward Mal, who had set his cup down and stood up.
His gaze locked on Lace. “Who was your mother?” he asked, sounding as if he’d just been kicked in the goddamn chest.
Turning to her, I saw she had gone as pale as Doc. Her eyes were wide, and she appeared shell-shocked.
“Ravina,” Lace replied just above a whisper. “Chapman.”
Twelve
Lace
“How old are you?” the man they had called Mal asked me.
“Twenty-five,” I replied before realizing I’d told him the lie that had been drilled into me since I had been six years old.
“Twenty-nine,” Dr. Burl corrected, but he was wrong too.
I shook my head. “No, I’m—I mean, I’m twenty-eight. I haven’t—I—that’s not,” I stammered.
How did I explain that I’d been forced to lie about my age?
“She’s also…” the doctor said.
His eyes were fixed on me now, and the sympathy and concern there made mine began to sting and fill with tears.
“She’s also not Dalia Antoinette Halsten.”
