“You want proof?” I said, my voice sounding like grinding stones. “You want to verify that this child is your blood?”
“If you are offering, dear,” Victoria said with a saccharine, poisonous smile. “A simple DNA test would clear up these unfortunate clouds, wouldn’t it? Unless, of course, there is a reason for your hesitation.”
“Order the tests,” I said, looking Victoria straight in the eye. “Right now. Today. But here is my condition.”
Daniel looked at me in shock. “Emma, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to satisfy their insanity.”
“No, Daniel. They want to talk about blood? Let’s talk about blood.” I turned back to Victoria. “We test everyone. Julia, you, Daniel, Robert, and me. We verify the entire Montgomery line, once and for all. Unless… you have something to hide?”
I threw her own words back at her, and for a fleeting second, I saw a flicker of something in Robert’s eyes. It wasn’t confidence. It was a cold, sharp spike of fear.
Victoria let out a tinkling, artificial laugh. “Whatever for? We know who we are.”
“Then you have nothing to fear from the science,” I countered. “Verify everyone, or get out and never speak to us again.”
As the hospital administrator was called to handle the legal paperwork, I didn’t know that I had just pulled the first thread of a thirty-year-old lie that was about to unravel the very foundation of the Montgomery empire.
The two days following the birth of Julia were a surreal blur of hormonal shifts and existential dread. While I learned the delicate art of nursing, a team of independent lab technicians was busy dissecting the very essence of the people I called my family. I had insisted on three separate laboratories—total transparency, no room for Montgomery influence or “donations” to sway the results.
Victoria and Robert had protested the “indignity” of the cheek swabs, but the threat of a public scandal—and my refusal to let them see the baby—had forced their hands.
The atmosphere in the hospital was heavy, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath. Daniel was a ghost of himself, torn between the parents who had raised him in luxury and the wife who was currently setting their world on fire. He spent hours staring at Julia, searching her tiny features for a confirmation that wasn’t there.
“Do you doubt me, Daniel?” I asked him on the second night, the room lit only by the soft blue glow of the baby’s bassinet.
