Chapter 2 - The Report He Feared
Julian grabbed my wrist.
“What report?”
I gently pulled away.
“The one you've spent two years trying to stop me from seeing.”
Evelyn immediately stepped between us.
“Leave.”
“I will.”
I looked around the mansion one last time.
“My lawyer already knows where I am.”
That sentence landed exactly where I wanted.
Julian followed me outside.
“Clara, listen.”
“No.”
“You don't understand.”
“I understand enough.”
I drove away before he could say another word.
Inside my car I finally opened the message.
The DNA laboratory had uploaded the completed results.
Not for a baby.
For something much older.
A blood sample taken from Julian's late father.
A hair recovered from his personal study.
And Julian himself.
The report confirmed one impossible truth.
Edward Blackwood...
Was not Julian's biological father.
Someone had switched paternity records thirty-eight years earlier.
Before I could process it, another message appeared.
DO NOT SHOW JULIAN.
HE DOESN'T KNOW WHO HIS REAL FATHER IS.
My phone rang.
The caller introduced himself as retired attorney Richard Lawson.
“I represented Julian's father before he died.”
“Why contact me now?”
“Because Edward left you something.”
“For me?”
“No.”
“For the woman who eventually discovered the truth.”
He asked me to meet him the following morning.
Before hanging up he added one sentence.
May you like
“Your marriage wasn't an accident.”
👉 Julian's fake paternity suggested his affair was only part of a much older family conspiracy that began before he was born.
