Chapter 8 - THE DNA LIE
Adrian felt the room tilt.
“When?”
“Before Boston.”
“How long before?”
“Two weeks.”
Celeste smiled.
Elena turned on her.
“You knew.”
“Of course.”
Adrian looked at the DNA report.
His hands were cold.
For hours he had believed Noah was biologically his.
Now that certainty had vanished.
But something strange happened.
His feelings toward Noah did not change.
Not even slightly.
He thought about the boy sleeping against his chest.
Calling him Daddy.
Reaching for Elena.
Being locked inside the quiet room.
Adrian placed the report down.
“I don’t care.”
Celeste’s smile faded.
“What?”
“If Noah isn’t biologically mine, I don’t care.”
Elena looked at him.
Adrian continued.
“I have raised him for six years.”
“He is my son.”
“And Elena is his mother.”
Celeste’s expression hardened.
“You’re being emotional.”
“No.”
Adrian leaned toward her.
“I’m finally being clear.”
Celeste looked at Elena.
“And you?”
Elena stared at the report.
“I want the truth.”
They ordered an independent DNA test.
No Bellamy laboratories.
No Whitmore doctors.
No private family attorneys.
Detective Sloan personally supervised collection.
The results arrived twenty-four hours later.
Adrian opened them.
Probability of paternity:
99.9998%.
He closed his eyes.
Elena began crying.
Celeste’s report had been fabricated.
But why?
Sloan answered that question.
“To divide you.”
Adrian nodded.
“And make Elena look dishonest.”
“Exactly.”
Then Sloan produced something else.
A search warrant had uncovered Celeste’s private archive.
Inside were hundreds of files.
Including Vivi’s.
Adrian opened it.
He expected proof Vivi had participated willingly from the beginning.
Instead he found medical records.
Vivi Bellamy.
Age nineteen.
Pregnancy.
Male infant.
Stillbirth.
Adrian stared.
Vivi had never told him.
There was more.
Psychiatric treatment.
Severe grief.
Years of therapy.
Then handwritten notes from Celeste.
VIVI REMAINS FIXATED ON REPLACING LOST CHILD.
Elena sat down slowly.
“She lost a baby.”
Adrian nodded.
For the first time, Vivi’s obsession had a beginning.
Not an excuse.
A beginning.
Celeste had taken her grieving daughter and fed the obsession.
When Elena became pregnant, Celeste saw an opportunity.
A baby tied to Adrian.
A baby Vivi could raise.
A baby that would strengthen the Bellamy-Whitmore alliance.
Elena whispered.
“She manipulated her own daughter.”
Adrian stared at Vivi’s file.
“Yes.”
“But Vivi still chose what she did.”
“Yes.”
Both truths could exist.
Vivi had been manipulated.
And Vivi had become an abuser herself.
Then Sloan’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her expression changed.
“We found Vivi.”
“Where?”
“St. Catherine’s Hospital.”
Elena went white.
The same hospital where everything began.
They arrived twenty minutes later.
Vivi stood inside the abandoned maternity wing.
The hospital had closed two years earlier.
She was holding a box.
Adrian stopped several feet away.
“What’s inside?”
Vivi looked exhausted.
“Everything my mother kept from me.”
She opened it.
Letters.
Photographs.
A tiny blue blanket.
And a birth certificate.
Vivi touched the blanket.
“My son lived for forty-seven minutes.”
Adrian said nothing.
“My mother told me I never held him.”
“She said it would make the grief worse.”
Vivi laughed bitterly.
“But I found a nurse’s letter.”
“She said I held him until he stopped breathing.”
Vivi looked at Adrian.
“My mother erased my memory too.”
Elena’s anger faltered.
Only slightly.
Vivi looked at her.
“I’m sorry.”
Elena stared back.
“You don’t get to use your pain to erase mine.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Elena stepped closer.
“You knew what it felt like to lose a child.”
“And you did it to me.”
Vivi began crying.
“I know.”
“You watched me beg.”
“I know.”
“You told Noah I was dead.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t ask me to forgive you.”
Vivi lowered her head.
“I’m not.”
She handed Adrian the box.
“There’s a ledger beneath the blanket.”
Adrian found it.
Names.
Payments.
Judges.
Doctors.
Social workers.
Police officers.
Dozens of people.
“This can destroy Celeste.”
Vivi nodded.
“That’s why she wants it.”
A sound came from the corridor.
Vivi’s eyes widened.
“She found me.”
A shadow appeared beyond the broken doors.
Celeste Bellamy stepped into the maternity wing.
Two men followed her.
And for the first time, the elegant philanthropist was no longer pretending.
“Give me the box, Vivian.”
Vivi held it tighter.
“No.”
Celeste sighed.
“I have spent my entire life cleaning up your mistakes.”
Vivi stared at her mother.
May you like
“No.”
“You spent your entire life creating them.”
