Chapter 4 - 99.9 Percent
The phone rang at 11:43 PM the next evening.
Victoria snatched it off the receiver before the second ring. "Speak."
"Victoria," Dr. Aris said, his voice trembling slightly. "I ran the sequence twice to be absolutely certain. The machines are calibrated perfectly. There is no margin of error."
Victoria’s grip on the phone turned her knuckles white. "Give me the numbers, Aris."
"The probability of maternity is 99.998%. The subject, Elena Hayes, is your biological daughter."
The breath completely left Victoria's lungs. The phone slipped from her hand, bouncing onto the thick Persian rug. She sank into her leather chair, clapping a hand over her mouth as a visceral, agonizing sob tore through her throat.
Twenty-five years.
Her flesh and blood had been raised in poverty. She had starved. She had taken the bus in the freezing cold. She had been humiliated in Victoria’s own home, forced to scrub floors and serve the girl who had stolen her life.
The grief morphed rapidly into something much more dangerous. Rage.
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Someone had done this. Babies don't just swap themselves. Someone had orchestrated the theft of the Sterling heir, likely to hide an illegitimate child or to strike a blow against Victoria's empire.
She wiped her tears, her eyes hardening into chips of dark flint. She would burn the world down to find out who did this. But first, she had to claim what was hers.
