25 I carried a baby for my twin brother after years of watching him struggle to become a father—but seconds after she was born, he looked at her and whispered, “I can’t take her home.”

I stood frozen, the scalpel trembling in my hand. The woman standing before me looked like a ghost brought to life. She shared the exact same structure of my jawline, the same deep blue eyes as Ryan and me, but her face was marred by a long, jagged scar running from her left ear down to her collarbone.

"Julianna?" I breathed, unable to process the reality of her presence. "You're... you're alive?"

"Barely," she replied, lowering her weapon and engaging the safety before tucking it into her belt. She looked battered, drenched from the rain, and exhausted beyond measure. Her eyes swept past me, locking onto the newborn sleeping on the steel table. "Is that... the baby?"

"Stay away from her!" I shouted, stepping firmly into her path, brandishing the scalpel. "Ryan told me everything! Pendelton said you sold out our family! He said you made a deal with the syndicate!"

Julianna let out a bitter, lifeless laugh, sinking down onto a wooden stool near the entrance as if her legs could no longer support her weight. "Pendelton is a liar, Maya. He’s been hunting me since the night Mom and Dad helped me escape."

"Mom and Dad are dead!" I yelled. "Or are they? Pendelton said they faked their crash!"

Julianna’s expression softened into deep, profound sorrow. She shook her head slowly. "No, Maya. Mom and Dad didn't fake their deaths. Pendelton murdered them in that car. He staged the accident and spread the rumor that they escaped to South America to keep you and Ryan from asking questions or looking for their bodies."

Tears blurred my vision as the weight of that truth crashed down on me. Our parents hadn't abandoned us. They hadn't run away with stolen money. They had been murdered protecting us.

"Then why did Ryan say you were involved with the syndicate?" I demanded, my voice cracking.

"Because Ryan was manipulated," Julianna explained quietly, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "Twelve years ago, our parents were top genetic researchers working for a private pharmaceutical firm secretly owned by Pendelton's syndicate. They discovered that the firm was conducting illegal human trial experiments. When Mom refused to continue, they threatened to use me as a test subject. I was born with a rare genetic vascular condition—the mark on my back is a cutaneous symptom of it."

She reached up, unzipping her jacket and pulling down her shirt collar slightly to reveal her left shoulder. There, etched into her skin, was the exact same dark-crimson crescent and split line birthmark that marked the newborn baby’s skin.

"When our parents tried to blow the whistle," Julianna continued, "Pendelton seized their research and forced them to engineer an encrypted biological key using my DNA structure. They hid the master decryption key inside my genetic code, knowing Pendelton couldn't kill me without losing access to his global accounts. But Mom secretly modified the code. It wasn't an account key. It was a virus—a digital wipeout tool designed to destroy Pendelton’s entire financial network the moment it was scanned and uploaded."

"And the baby?" I asked, looking back at the sleeping child. "How did Ryan get your egg?"

"It wasn't a coincidence," Julianna said angrily. "Pendelton tracked down a frozen tissue sample my mother hid in a private fertility clinic years ago. He set a trap. He lured Ryan to that clinic using targeted advertisements and fake medical profiles, knowing Ryan was desperate for a child. Pendelton wanted Ryan and Melissa to use my biological material so he could harvest a fresh, living subject carrying the uncorrupted DNA sequence."

"My God..." I gasped, dropping the scalpel onto the desk. "Ryan wasn't just tricked. He was used as a vessel to birth Pendelton’s ultimate payload."

"And now Pendelton has Ryan and Melissa," Julianna added grimly, standing up. "He knows you took the baby. He will use Ryan to force you to hand her over. But if he gets his hands on this child and scans her DNA into his system, he will unlock his money, realize our mother’s trap, and then execute all of us—including your son, Leo."

At the mention of my son's name, panic surged through me once more. "Pendelton’s men are at my house right now! They're watching Leo!"

"We have to move," Julianna said firmly, pulling a encrypted satellite phone from her coat. "I have a team of former federal agents who have been helping me track Pendelton. But to save Leo and rescue Ryan, we have to play Pendelton’s game. We have to make him believe we are walking right into his trap."