My Twin Brother Looked at His Newborn Daughter for the First Time, Refused Her, and His Wife Smiled Immediately

Ryan picked up the newborn in his arms and at that very moment made such a face, as if he were holding not a baby in his arms, but a terrible verdict.

All this happened in the maternity room, at six twelve in the morning. Rain ran down the windows like tears, while the machine produced a monotonous sound. I was lying on the bed, exhausted and filled with trembling, but when I saw my little girl, I forgot all the pain.

Melissa leaned toward me and kissed me through her tears.

“Anna, you saved our lives,” she whispered to me. “She is amazing.”

But Ryan was standing by the door. My twin, my companion from childhood, the person who always understood me with the very first glance. He was holding a small white hat embroidered with yellow stars. Throughout the entire pregnancy he had carried it around and said that he would take his daughter home in that very hat.

“Come on, Ryan,” I said. “Your girl is waiting for you.”

He slowly came closer. The nurse carefully placed the baby in his arms. For several seconds Ryan only looked at her face. Then his fingers tensed.

The little girl opened her eyes. Behind her left ear, under the skin, a dark crescent-shaped mark could be seen. I had not noticed it earlier.

Ryan’s breath caught.

“No,” he said.

Melissa frowned.

“What happened?”

My brother held the baby as if she were trying to escape from his hands.

“I cannot take her,” he said more loudly. “This child is not ours.”

It was as if the air disappeared from the room. The nurse looked at me in shock, while Melissa covered her face with her hand.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

Ryan turned his eyes away from the baby.

“Everything has to be checked. Right now.”

“This is your daughter,” Melissa told me, but instead of joy, a strange calmness appeared in her voice. “You chose the clinic yourself, you signed.”

Ryan looked at her.

“Be quiet.”

He pronounced that word in such a way that for the first time in my life I became afraid of my brother.

Four hours earlier, before the labor began, he stopped me in the corridor and told me that he had something important to clarify with the doctors. At the time I thought he was simply nervous. But now a folded paper fell from his pocket and landed on the floor.

I reached toward it, but Ryan quickly picked it up.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then why is your hand trembling?”

He did not answer me.

Melissa stood by the baby’s crib and silently watched the two of us. On her wrist she wore a golden watch, inside which a small red stone glittered. Ryan had given her this watch on their wedding anniversary, but now Melissa touched it as if she were checking something.

“I will take the baby,” she said.

“No one is going anywhere yet,” Ryan replied.

The nurse closed the door.

“Sir, if you have doubts, genetic testing and the involvement of the clinic administration are necessary.”

“It has already been checked,” Ryan said.

I tried to sit up from the bed. A cold emptiness appeared in my heart.

“What has been checked?”

Ryan put the paper back into his pocket. His face became white as ash.

“Anna, you should not have been in this pregnancy.”

“What does that mean?”

Melissa suddenly opened the door and went out into the corridor.

Ryan ran after her. I was calling for the nurse when the sound of something heavy falling came from the corridor. Then someone shouted:

“Bring the file here!”

The door opened. A dark-haired woman stood there with a dark green folder in her hand and looked directly at Ryan. She placed the folder on the table, opened the clasp, and put her finger on the first sheet……

…Ryan grabbed the woman by the arm.

“Not here,” he told her. “She must not find out.”

“She has already found out,” I answered and got down from the bed.

The clinic’s stamp could be seen in the folder. My name was written on the very first page, but the second line had been erased. Melissa stood by the wall, and all color had left her face.

“Who are you?” I asked the woman.

“I am Nino, the head of the clinic laboratory. I have been trying to find you for three days.”

Ryan said sternly to her:

“Nino, leave here.”

“I cannot leave until this child is safe.”

A small girl’s blanket was in my hands. A little sun was embroidered on the fabric with pink thread. I clutched it with my fingers, as if only this connected me to reality.

“Tell me the truth,” I said.

Nino looked at Ryan.

“She must know the truth now.”

Melissa stepped forward.

“Do not listen to her. She is a dismissed employee and wants revenge.”

Nino took a small memory card from the folder.

“I have one recording. And if we listen to it, you will understand why Ryan is refusing the child.”

Ryan lowered his eyes.

“Anna, please, do not listen yet.”

“I spent the entire pregnancy saving your family. Now they are taking my child from my hands and you tell me not to listen?”

Nino turned on the device. A hoarse woman’s voice sounded in the room:

“If a girl is born, Ryan will lose everything…”

The recording stopped exactly when heavy footsteps sounded outside the door. Nino brought the phone to her ear and whispered warningly:

“They are here…”

…The door handle slowly moved downward, but Nino did not move. The woman’s voice could still be heard from the phone, this time more clearly.

“If a girl is born, Ryan will lose everything. Therefore the records must be changed, and Anna must be told that the embryo did not survive.”

Silence fell over the room.

Melissa leaned her head against the wall. Ryan closed his eyes.

I looked at him.

“Is that your wife’s voice?”

Ryan barely exhaled.

“Yes.”

Melissa immediately turned toward him.

“Ryan, do not dare.”

“Enough, Melissa.”

Nino turned off the sound and spread the papers from the folder across the table. It said that the embryo implanted with my consent had been registered under another number. In the clinic records, the child seemed to have been created from Melissa’s egg, but different data could be read in the laboratory’s original report.

“The embryo was deliberately switched,” Nino said. “Melissa paid Doctor Sandro to replace your brother’s genetic material with someone else’s material.”

“Why?” I asked.

Ryan found a chair and sat down. His hands trembled the way they had on the day our father died in the hospital.

“Because Melissa needed a child who would be in my name,” he said. “But not for our family. She needed an heir in order to receive her father’s property. Several weeks ago I found out that these records were false. Then I secretly carried out a test.”

“And the baby?”

Nino handed me the second sheet.

“This girl belongs to you and Ryan. Her genetic data matches Ryan’s. Not Melissa’s.”

Melissa laughed loudly, but the laughter soon turned into crying.

“Impossible.”

“It is possible,” Nino told her. “Two samples were found in the laboratory. One was yours, and the other belonged to the woman whose embryo Melissa requested. The doctor did not make a mistake; he deliberately switched the labels.”

I looked at the baby. She had a crescent-shaped mark behind her ear. Ryan had had the same mark since childhood.

“Is that why you said she was not ours?” I asked him.

“Because I thought Melissa would destroy everything. I thought that if I refused the child, they would leave her with you and she would not be able to use her.”

“But you did not explain it to me.”

“I was afraid.”

That was the most sincere word I had ever heard from him.

The footsteps behind the door stopped. Nino ran to the window and looked at her phone.

“I called the police,” she said.

Melissa suddenly ran toward the door, but Ryan blocked her way.

“Get out of my way!”

“This time I cannot protect you.”

“You are my husband!”

“And she is my daughter.”

At these words Ryan carefully picked up the baby. The girl wrapped her fingers around his thumb. My brother began to cry, so quietly that at first I noticed only the trembling of his shoulders.

But Nino turned over the next sheet and her expression changed.

“Anna, there is another record here. And if I understood this correctly, Melissa’s plan was not only to obtain the child…”

She held the sheet out toward me. My signature was written on it, although I had never seen this document in my life…