I turned on the lamp, and in the warm light of the room I finally saw it clearly.

It was a thick brown envelope.

Old. Worn. The kind that had lived in the dark for many years.

My throat tightened. Amelia stared at it as if it were a live grenade.

“Open it,” she said, barely audible.

I pulled the papers out. The first sheet made whatever air was left in my lungs vanish.

It was a DNA test report.

Leo’s name was on it. Mine was too.

The result read: 99.998% probability.

I felt the bed tilt, as though the room were suddenly underwater. I could hear my own pulse in my ears, pounding and wild. For a long moment, all I could do was stare at that number.

My voice came out broken. “He’s my son.”

Amelia shook her head sharply, panic in her eyes. “You don’t understand! Keep reading! That’s not the part I’m talking about!”

There were more papers, folded behind the first one. Hospital records. Old letters. Notes in Nora’s handwriting. A name I had never seen before.

Amelia’s voice rose in a rasping whisper. “Your best friend never told you. She hid it from you. She raised him for two years knowing the truth and she never told you!”

My hands shook as I dug deeper into the envelope. The letters smelled of dust and something older—like grief that had never found air.

The first letter was addressed to me.

Oliver, if you are reading this, then something terrible has happened.

I stopped. My eyes burned, but I forced myself to continue.

I never told you who Leo’s father was. I never knew how. The truth is, Leo is yours. We made a mistake that night after the foster home reunion. You don’t remember because you were drunk, and I told myself I wouldn’t destroy our friendship by confessing. You had nothing, Oliver. I was afraid you would feel trapped. But Leo deserves to know someday.

Forgive me.

Nora.

My vision blurred. I felt the paper crush in my fist.

Memories slammed into me—distorted, fragmented images of that night. I had always assumed I blacked out from exhaustion. I never asked questions. Nora never brought it up. And I never imagined…

“He’s mine,” I whispered, barely hearing my own voice.

Amelia stood up, pacing like a caged animal. “That’s why we need to give him away!”

That snapped me back to reality.

“What?” I croaked. “Why would we give him away?”

Her eyes were wide with something beyond fear—almost disgust.

“I looked through the rest,” she said, pointing at the stack. “Nora didn’t just hide his paternity. She hid his condition.”

“Condition?” I repeated.

Amelia ran a hand through her hair, voice cracking. “Oliver… Leo isn’t just a normal child. He was part of a medical program. Experimental treatments, secret hospital visits, neurological evaluations. He was flagged as… dangerous.”

The word hung in the room like a blade.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Leo is gentle. He’s smart. He’s never hurt anyone!”

Her voice broke. “That’s what you think. But he’s been hiding things from you. Tools. Dissected animals in jars. I found drawings under his bed—violent drawings. Detailed diagrams of human anatomy. Notes about how people think, how they can be manipulated. And look at this!”

She shoved a final document into my hands.

A psychiatric evaluation.

The typed lines were cold, clinical, merciless. A list of symptoms. Lack of affect. Separation between emotional understanding and emotional empathy. Predicted behavioral patterns.

Term used: emerging sociopathic traits.

I stared at it until the letters blurred.

“No,” I whispered. “This is insane.”

But Amelia shook her head, voice trembling. “He’s been evaluated every year at the same underground clinic. Nora paid cash. They monitored him because they weren’t sure how his brain would develop.”

“Why would Nora keep this secret?” I choked.

“Because she was terrified,” Amelia snapped. “She wrote it in one of the letters. She was afraid they would take him away and lock him up if they knew. So she ran. She hid him. And when she died, the secret passed to you.”

I felt the ground dissolve under my feet.

Leo. My son.

The boy who cried when his goldfish died. The boy who hugged me every morning. The boy who called me Dad.

“He’s not dangerous,” I said hoarsely. “He’s just a kid.”

Amelia’s voice turned cold and hollow. “Then explain what I saw tonight.”

She walked to the doorway and motioned for me to follow.

Every instinct in my body screamed to stay seated, but I stood and walked after her.

She led me to Leo’s room. The door was half-open. The air smelled faintly of paint, metal, something sterile.

Leo was asleep, curled up with his blanket, peaceful, almost angelic.

But the scene around him made my blood run cold.

On the desk: scalpels, labeled and cleaned like surgical tools.

In a notebook: sketches of animal skeletons and dissected organs, with notes detailing survival times and reaction patterns.