The Nanny's Secret, The Wife's Revenge

The call came from my son's elite private school. The nurse was cheerful, telling me seven-year-old Jace had a minor scrape and needed a routine blood transfusion.

Then she said something that made my blood run cold. "It's a good thing we have his A-positive blood type on file."

My husband, Christian, and I are both O-negative. It's biologically impossible.

A secret DNA test confirmed the horrifying truth. Jace was not my son. He was Christian's child with our live-in nanny, Kassidy.

They had swapped my baby at birth. For seven years, I had been raising my husband's affair child while my own son was missing.

My entire life, my perfect marriage to the man I'd loved since high school, was a lie. The man I had spent years searching for after a car accident supposedly gave him amnesia had been playing me the entire time.

But in a twisted attempt to gaslight me with a new, manipulated DNA test, Christian made a fatal mistake. He accidentally sent a hair sample from my biological son.

The test confirmed he was alive.

Suddenly, I had a reason to live. I would find my son, and then I would burn my husband's world to the ground.

Chapter 1

The phone call from Jace' s elite private school came on a Tuesday. The nurse' s voice was cheerful, unconcerned.

"Hi, Mrs. Norman. Jace took a little tumble on the playground. He's perfectly fine, just a scrape, but he'll need a blood transfusion as a precaution. Standard procedure."

My heart jumped into my throat, but her calm tone soothed me.

"Is he okay? Can I talk to him?"

"He's right here, eating a cookie. He's a brave little guy," she chirped. "It's a good thing we already had his blood type on file from the enrollment physical. A-positive. We're all set."

A silence stretched. My blood ran cold, a sudden, sharp chill that had nothing to do with the autumn air.

"What did you say his blood type was?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"A-positive," the nurse repeated, a hint of confusion in her tone. "I thought you'd said you and your husband were both O-negative? Funny how genetics work, huh?"

No. It wasn' t funny. It was impossible.

Two O-negative parents cannot have an A-positive child. It's basic biology, a simple, undeniable fact I learned in tenth grade.

The rest of the conversation was a blur. I mumbled my assent, hung up the phone, and stood frozen in the middle of my sun-drenched living room. My perfect life, the one I had painstakingly built, had just developed a fatal crack.

There were only two possibilities. Either Jace was not my husband Christian' s son, or he was not mine.

My hands started to shake. I had carried Jace for nine months. I had endured twenty hours of labor. I had felt him kick, heard his first cry. He had to be mine. He had to be.

Which left the other, equally devastating possibility. Had Christian cheated on me?

The thought was a physical blow. Christian Norman, the charismatic tech CEO, the man who was publicly lauded as a devoted family man. The man I had loved since we were teenagers.

I needed proof.

The next three days were a masterclass in deception. I smiled, I cooked Christian' s favorite meals, I played the part of the perfect wife while a gaping hole tore through my reality. I hired a private lab, using a toothbrush from Jace' s bathroom and one of my own hairs. I told Christian it was just for a comprehensive allergy panel. He bought it without question, patting my head and telling me not to worry so much.

The email with the results arrived on Friday afternoon. The subject line was clinical: "DNA Analysis Results."

I clicked it open. My eyes scanned the jargon until they landed on the conclusion.

PROBABILITY OF MATERNITY: 0%

The words swam before my eyes. Zero percent. Jace, the boy I had raised for seven years, was not my son.

The report continued, a clinical, brutal dissection of my life. It confirmed Jace' s paternity with Christian Norman at 99.99%. And then, the final, twisting knife. A secondary analysis, requested under a clause I didn' t remember authorizing, identified the biological mother.

Kassidy Hart.

Our live-in nanny. The sweet, unassuming woman we'd hired to help after Jace was born. The former physical therapist who had helped Christian recover from the accident that had nearly killed him years ago.

The floor felt like it was tilting. My entire marriage, my entire life, was a lie.

Christian wasn't just a cheater. He was a monster. He and his mistress had swapped my baby at birth, placed their child in my arms, and let me raise him as my own.

My own son. Where was my son? The report had no information on that. He was just... gone. Replaced.

I sank to the floor, the polished hardwood cold against my skin. I called my best friend, Britt Hansen, a cutthroat corporate lawyer.

"Carmen? What's wrong? You sound awful."

My voice came out as a strangled sob. "Britt... I need a lawyer."

"I am a lawyer," she said, her tone sharpening. "What happened?"

"Jace... he's not my son."

There was a stunned silence on the other end. "What the hell are you talking about?"

I told her everything. The blood type. The DNA test. Kassidy Hart.

"That son of a bitch," Britt hissed. "That prenup I made you sign. The infidelity clause. We're going to take him for everything he' s worth."

I remembered the prenup. Christian had laughed it off, calling it a formality, a silly piece of paper between two people who would be together forever. He had signed it with a flourish, his love for me supposedly trumping any legal document.

Another lie.

As Britt was talking, another email notification popped up on my screen. It was from the same lab. A correction.

"Client Christian Norman requested a secondary, placating DNA test. A sample of your biological son's hair was used by mistake. The sample confirms your biological son is alive."

A manipulated DNA test, meant to gaslight me further, had accidentally given me the one thing I needed to keep breathing.

My son was alive.

The report confirmed Jace's biological parents were Christian and Kassidy. The cold, hard facts were laid out, an irrefutable testament to years of betrayal.

My body trembled, a storm of grief and rage taking over. Tears I didn' t know I had left streamed down my face, hot and useless.

Where was my baby? What had they done with my real son?

My mind flashed back through the years, a dizzying montage of lies. Christian and I were high school sweethearts. He was the golden boy, I was the aspiring designer. We were inseparable. After college, he was in a horrific car accident. He was missing for weeks. The police told me to move on, that he was likely dead.

I refused. I spent every penny I had, searching for him. I plastered his face on flyers, hired private investigators, followed dead-end leads until I was thin and exhausted. My parents had to force me to stop, worried I was destroying myself.

For three years, I never gave up hope. I searched, I waited. And then, a miracle. He was found. He was alive, living in a small town, but he had amnesia. He didn't remember me. And he wasn't alone. He was with Kassidy Hart.

She was his physical therapist, he'd said. She had nursed him back to health. She was older, plain, nothing like the women he used to date. But he seemed to depend on her.

When I tried to talk to him about our past, he pushed me away, his eyes cold and unfamiliar. It was Kassidy who calmed him, who gently coaxed him into listening.

Slowly, painstakingly, I pieced his memory back together. I took him to our old haunts, showed him photos, told him stories. It worked. His memory returned, and we were married a year later.

I thought our love had conquered the impossible. I leaned on him more than ever, my own strength depleted from the years of searching. When I got pregnant with Jace, it felt like the final piece of our perfect life falling into place.

A few months after Jace was born, Kassidy showed up at our door. She claimed her house had burned down, that she had nowhere to go. I felt sorry for her. Christian had told me how much she' d helped him. Out of gratitude, I offered her a place to stay.

I even let her become Jace's nanny.

The irony was so thick it choked me.