Chapter 11 — His Own Daughter

The horror of it took a moment to spread through that garden, because it was so strange that people’s minds resisted it, the way a mind resists a thing it does not want to be true.

Carmen explained.

Diego had blackmailed her — had forged employment documents to threaten her son, who worked as a delivery driver for the company warehouse — and under that threat, he had forced Carmen to slip into Maya’s room one night while my daughter slept, to swab the inside of my sleeping child’s cheek, and to place that sample into the vial labeled with Mateo’s name.

Arthur’s own genetic sample had been real.

He had submitted his own cheek swab honestly.