Two pages.
The first is a chain-of-custody form. Sample collected Sunday at 10:14 a.m. Result complete Sunday at 8:42 p.m.
He has been carrying it since the result came in.
The second page is the result.
The samples share the genetic markers of full siblings. They also share the additional markers of dizygotic twins.
Fraternal.
Born of the same pregnancy. Carried by the same woman. Lost to the same lie.
I sit in the chair. The page is in my hand, and I am looking at it, and I am not looking at it.
I am looking at every other page that has gone through my hands since I was thirteen years old. The high school transcripts. The Army enlistment papers. The Ranger qualification papers. The first NYPD pay stub. The detective's shield. The badge number.
Every one of those pages belongs to a man named Sean Donovan. His life was written by a Greek criminal named Kostas Stavros.
Frank thought he was helping.
He was not.
The Greek was paying to write a life. The life he was writing was mine.
I have been a cop for twelve years because Kostas Stavros decided, in 1988, in a hospital in Astoria, that the baby he stole was going to belong to him.
Frank loved me, and Frank was the instrument. Karen loved me, and they died loving me, and the loving did not save them, and the loving did not save me from being the thing the Greek had decided I was going to be.
I am going to throw up.
I am not going to throw up.
I am the man across the table from the brother I have not had for thirty-eight years, and I am not going to throw up in front of him.
I put the page down.
He is watching me the way an operator watches an operator. Without moving. Without speaking. Without flinching.
For a long second, neither of us speaks.
Then he speaks.
"You've been hunting the wrong family your entire life, brother."
The word lands.
The word isbrother.
He has been holding it in his mouth since he walked through the door. He gives it the way a SEAL gives a thing he has decided to give. Once. With weight. Without expecting it back.
I do not give it back yet. I cannot. I am still inside the page.
He nods once. He understands. He is going to wait as long as I need.
That is also a Moretti thing.
We have been in the same wars in different uniforms.
