Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77170 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77170 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“You’re saying…” My father shakes his head, rakes his fingers through his graying hair. “You’re saying that my uncle, who died at Brad Steel’s wedding, is actually the father of Jack here?”
“That’s what this would suggest. Your DNA indicates that you share paternal grandparents. Which means your fathers are full-blooded brothers. So unless your father had another full brother that we don’t know about, which I doubt…”
“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Dad says. “All this time… Here it was under my nose. Our connection to the Steels and my uncle.”
“How the hell did she get your uncle’s sperm?” I ask. “He was dead.”
“I’m not sure you want to hear this,” Ruby says, “but it is possible to extract sperm from a dying man or a recently dead body.”
“God,” Dad says. “What did she do? Stick a needle in my uncle’s balls?”
“To put it crudely,” Ruby says. “Depending on who did the extraction. You can also do it through a testicular biopsy or complete removal of the testicles.”
“So she fucking castrated him?” Dad yells.
“Look, Sean,” Ruby says. “None of us knows how she got the sperm. For all we know, he could’ve jacked off into a cup some time before he collapsed at Brad Steel’s wedding. With Wendy Madigan, anything is possible.”
I gulp down nausea. “I suppose it would’ve been easier for her to convince him to jack off in a cup than for her to sneak into the hospital and extract sperm from his comatose body.”
“Exactly,” Ruby says.
“And apparently she got the same thing from Brad Steel.”
“Actually…” She grabs her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. “I need to talk to Ryan.”
“You need to talk to us, Ruby,” Dad says. “I’ve waited this long to figure out what the hell happened to my uncle. I want to know all your secrets now.”
“My father, Theodore Matthias, is one of these men. And I think…” Color drains from Ruby’s face. “I think they may have submitted their sperm knowingly.”
“What the hell makes you think that?”
“Sixty years ago, this was a new technology. And knowing Wendy Madigan, she wanted to get in on it. You see, the future lawmakers club was all about money, about profit. About all of them getting rich. And this was something new. In fact… I’d bet they gave their samples while they were still in high school.”
“Nope, that doesn’t fly,” Dad says. “My uncle didn’t know them in high school. He and Brad met in college.”
“Right,” Ruby says. “Which was right after high school. And Brad Steel was still funding the future lawmakers club at that time.”
“God, so he talked Uncle Sean into…” I shake my head.
“I said it’s only a theory. But I’m a detective. I know how the criminal mind works. And, unfortunately, I know Wendy Madigan.”
I pull my phone out, do a quick search.
“The timing doesn’t quite add up. This source says that sperm freezing dates back to eighteenth-century Italy.”
“Sure,” Ruby says. “Everything starts way before it actually starts.”
I check a new source. “All right, the first sperm banks began as early as nineteen sixty-four… So maybe the timing does add up.”
“Exactly,” Ruby says. “Those were only the first sperm banks, when it wasn’t common.” She shakes her head. “I’ll be fucking damned.”
“At least my uncle lives on,” Dad says. “Through you, Jack.”
“Why would my grandmother use your uncle’s sperm to fertilize my mother?” Jack shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me either,” Ruby says. “There’s something I’m not seeing here.”
“I’m just glad you’re here, son,” Dad says to Jack. “I mean, I guess you’re my cousin, not my nephew. But with you being the same age as Brendan here, well, it feels like I got part of my uncle back in a new nephew.”
“Why are you so interested in what happened to your uncle?” Ruby says. “You must’ve been just a kid when he died.”
“I was,” Dad says. “But I was named after him, and he and I had a kind of special relationship.”
Ruby simply nods. “I don’t know that there’s any point in searching anymore. I doubt that your grandmother has a cryogenic facility hidden somewhere in this house. Which means…”
“She wanted us to find this,” I say. “It’s a plant.”
“Bingo,” Ruby says. “And we need to figure out why.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ava
“Do you think I could be right?” I ask Dad. “Why would she make up a half brother?”
“I wish I could tell you why my mother does what she does,” Dad says. “But I can’t, and I’m damned glad of that. If my mind worked the way hers did, I’d be pretty worried.”
“And that’s why you’re worried about me.”
Dad nods. “Ava, she’s not a good person. If there is such a thing as pure evil in the world, my mother personifies it. I understand that you want to know why she reached out to you. But I’m concerned. You tend to see the good in everything, Ava. That’s something wonderful about you. But don’t try to find the good in your grandmother. It doesn’t exist.”