Chapter 6 - The Paternity Test
Z
The cotton swab felt cold against the inside of baby Leo’s cheek.
The technician, a solemn-faced woman named Brenda wearing blue scrubs, worked with practiced, methodical precision. She held Leo’s small head gently, twirling the swab inside his mouth for ten seconds before carefully sliding it into a sterile glass vial. She capped it, sealed it with a red tamper-evident tape, and wrote Leo’s court-mandated identification number on the label.
"One sample complete," Brenda said softly, setting the vial into a padded metallic briefcase. She pulled out a second sterile package. "Now for the mother."
I opened my mouth without hesitation, letting her scrape the inside of my cheek. I had nothing to hide. Every second of this humiliating process was a step closer to vindication, a step closer to ripping my daughters back from Aaron’s clutches.
"The father's sample was collected at eight o'clock this morning at his attorney's office," Brenda informed me as she sealed my vial. "All three samples will be transported directly to the state-certified genetics laboratory. Under the emergency court order, processing has been expedited. Results will be delivered directly to Judge Thomas's chambers by four o'clock on Sunday afternoon."
"Thank you," I said, my voice steady.
Once Brenda left with her metallic briefcase, the room fell into a heavy, expectant quiet. The physical evidence was officially out of our hands. Now, it was a agonizing waiting game.
Over the next two days, my private recovery room became a war room.
Eleanor Vance-Cross transformed the small space into an operational command center. Folders, financial spreadsheets, and witness statements covered the coffee table and visitor chairs. Diana arrived on Friday morning, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying, bringing me clean clothes, my makeup bag, and a laptop.
"How are the girls?" I asked immediately, clutching Diana’s hands the second she walked through the door. "Have you heard anything?"
Diana swallowed hard, wiping a tear from her cheek. "I managed to speak to Lily for two minutes last night before Aaron realized she had sneaked her iPad into her room."
"What did she say? Is she okay?!"
"She's terrified, Elena," Diana whispered, her voice trembling. "She said Aaron won't let them leave the townhouse. He brought in his mother—your mother-in-law, Judith—to watch them while he's at work with Victoria. Lily said Judith keeps telling them that you're 'sick' and need to be away for a while."
A surge of volcanic rage boiled in my blood. Judith. Aaron’s overbearing, cold mother who had spent eleven years subtly criticizing my parenting, my cooking, and my inability to produce a male heir until now. Now she was in my children’s ear, poisoning their innocent minds against me.
"Judith is telling them I'm sick?!" I almost shrieked.
"Lily doesn't believe her," Diana added quickly. "She told me to tell you that she loves you and that she's taking care of Grace, Chloe, and little Ava. Grace is crying every night for her mommy, Elena. It's breaking my heart."
I leaned my forehead against Diana’s shoulder, weeping quietly, letting the agonizing pain wash over me before clamping down on it with raw willpower. I couldn't afford to break down now. I needed every ounce of my sanity for Monday morning.
"What about the hotel?" Michael asked, stepping into the room with two cups of black coffee. He handed one to Diana and sat down beside Eleanor. "Did your private investigator get the surveillance footage from the Grand Royale?"
Eleanor pulled a silver USB drive from her pocket and plugged it into her laptop. Her sharp eyes glinted with cold satisfaction.
"Marcus, my investigator, came through," Eleanor announced, turning the laptop screen so Michael, Diana, and I could see. "The Grand Royale surveillance footage from the executive suite floor, dated over the last three months."
The video played. The camera shot showed a luxurious carpeted hallway outside Suite 412.
At 6:15 PM on a Tuesday evening—a night Aaron had told me he was trapped in an emergency partner meeting—Aaron appeared on screen. He was wearing his work suit, carrying a bottle of expensive red wine. He used a keycard, opened the door to Suite 412, and stepped inside.
Ten minutes later, another figure walked down the hallway toward the same room.
She was wearing a sleek red coat, high heels, and dark sunglasses. As she reached the door, she pulled off her sunglasses and looked around nervously.
I gasped, pressing my hands over my mouth.
"Oh my God," Diana breathed, her eyes wide with shock. "Is that...?"
"Yes," Eleanor said coldly, pausing the video right as the woman's face was fully illuminated by the hallway light. "That is Rebecca Vance. Aaron’s junior associate at his law firm. And Victoria’s lead paralegal."
The room went completely dead silent.
I stared at the screen, my mind spinning violently. Rebecca Vance—no relation to Aaron, just a young, ambitious twenty-six-year-old attorney who had been hired by Aaron’s firm two years ago. I had met her at the company Christmas party. She had smiled in my face, complemented my pregnancy dress, and patted my swollen stomach!
"He wasn't just having an affair," Michael realized out loud, his voice dripping with pure disgust. "He was sleeping with his paralegal in a five-star hotel using joint marital funds while his pregnant wife was on bed rest at home!"
"It gets worse," Eleanor said, clicking to another folder on the USB drive. "Marcus did a deep dive into Rebecca’s financial records. Three weeks ago—the exact week Aaron was passed over for partner—a transfer of fifty thousand dollars was made from Aaron’s personal offshore account into an LLC registered under Rebecca’s name."
"Offshore account?" I looked at Eleanor, completely baffled. "Aaron doesn't have an offshore account! We barely had sixty thousand in our savings!"
"He has had an undisclosed account in the Cayman Islands for four years, Elena," Eleanor revealed grimly. "He has been systematically siphoning money out of your joint accounts, under-reporting his corporate bonuses, and hiding assets. Why? Because he was planning to leave you long before baby Leo was born."
The realization hit me like a physical blow to the chest, knocking the air right out of my lungs.
It was never about the birthmark.
It was never about Michael.
It was never about an affair that never happened.
The birthmark on Leo’s back wasn't the cause of Aaron’s sudden departure; it was his goddamn exit strategy.
He was already cheating. He had already embezzled fifty thousand dollars to his mistress. He was already drowning in financial fraud and professional failure. When he saw that birthmark on Leo’s back, his twisted, brilliant legal mind realized he had just been handed a silver platter—a way to play the victim, destroy my credibility, secure custody of the girls to avoid paying child support, and frame his best friend and wife for his own moral bankruptcy!
"He set us up," I whispered, the sheer cruelty of it terrifying me to my core. "He staged the entire thing. He knew Michael was helping me at the house. He encouraged Michael to come over! He kept telling Michael, 'Go check on Elena, go help her with groceries!' He was setting the stage for months!"
"Precisely," Eleanor said, slamming her laptop shut with a heavy snap. "He created a narrative where he was the heartbroken, hard-working husband betrayed by his pregnant wife and his best friend. It was the perfect smokescreen to hide his own embezzlement, infidelity, and career ruin."
Michael stood up, his face pale with fury. He walked over to the wall and leaned his forehead against it, his fists clenching so hard his knuckles popped loudly in the quiet room.
"I trusted him," Michael rasped, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of sorrow and rage. "I loved him like a brother. When he asked me to take care of you while you were on bed rest, I thought I was helping my best friend... and he was just using me as a pawn in his sick game."
"He used all of us," I said, getting up from the bed, carrying Leo in my arms. I walked over to Michael and laid a hand on his arm. "But he made one huge mistake."
Michael turned to look at me, his dark eyes filled with pain. "What's that?"
"He underestimated Eleanor," I said, looking over at Aaron’s aunt, who smiled a sharp, cold, lethal smile. "And he forgot that science doesn't lie."
On Sunday afternoon at 4:15 PM, my phone chimed with an encrypted email notification.
The sender was the State Certified Genetics Laboratory.
Attached was a sealed PDF document containing the official court-mandated DNA analysis for baby Leo Vance.
My heart pounded like a jackhammer against my ribs as Eleanor opened the attachment on her laptop screen. We all gathered around the desk—Eleanor, Michael, Diana, and I holding Leo tight.
Eleanor scrolled down past the complex genetic markers, the alleles, and the statistical probability charts, straight to the bold red text printed at the bottom of the final page:
PROBABILITY OF PATERNITY:
AARON VANCE IS CONFIRMED AS THE BIOLOGICAL FATHER OF THE INFANT (LEO VANCE) WITH A PROBABILITY OF 99.999%.
ALLEGED PATERNAL EXCLUSION: NEGATIVE.
A collective, massive gasp echoed through the room, followed immediately by Diana breaking into violent, sobbing tears of relief.
I stared at the 99.999% number on the screen. The truth was written in black, white, and red.
Aaron was the father. My child was his son. My honor was clean.
May you like
"It's over," Diana cried, hugging my shoulders tightly. "Elena, it's over! You won!"
"No," Eleanor said softly, her green eyes fixing on the court summons for tomorrow morning. Her expression was cold, hard, and merciless. "It’s not over. Tomorrow at nine AM, the execution begins."
