Chapter 1 - THE ENVELOPE HE SHOULDN’T HAVE BROUGHT
Julian shoved me hard enough that my right heel slid across the polished floor.
My hand went straight to my stomach.
The twins shifted low beneath my red evening gown, and for one sick second I thought I was going down in front of two hundred people.
Then Garrison Blackwood caught my elbow.
“Easy.”
His voice was calm.
His grip wasn’t.
He steadied me before I could fall, then stepped between Julian and me.
Across the banquet hall, conversations died one after another.
Julian Brooks stood beneath the crystal chandelier in a dark blue suit, staring at me like my presence had ruined his evening.
“Do you still have the nerve to show your face here?”
I took my arm back from Garrison once I found my balance.
“My name was on the invitation.”
Chloe laughed behind Julian.
She looked exactly like the photographs I had spent six months pretending not to care about.
Champagne-colored dress.
Blonde hair pinned at the nape of her neck.
One hand wrapped around a glass of champagne.
The other resting possessively against Julian’s arm.
Julian pointed toward my stomach.
“That baby has nothing to do with me.”
The sentence landed harder than the shove.
Not because I believed him.
Because everyone else heard it.
I was thirty-three years old, twenty-seven weeks pregnant with twins, and standing at the annual Charlotte Civic Foundation dinner because my employer had purchased a table.
I had not come for Julian.
I had certainly not come for Chloe.
But Julian had apparently decided my pregnancy was a public accusation.
Garrison took half a step forward.
“Step back.”
Julian looked at him.
“You stay out of this.”
“I will when you stop putting your hands on a pregnant woman.”
A murmur moved through the crowd.
Julian’s jaw tightened.
He reached into his jacket.
For one second, I wondered whether he was pulling out his phone.
Instead he produced a white envelope.
He slammed it onto the banquet table.
“Open it.”
I looked at the envelope.
Then at him.
“What is it?”
“You wanted proof.”
“I never asked you for anything.”
“You’ve been telling people those babies are mine.”
“I have never said that.”
Chloe took a sip of champagne.
“Everybody assumes it.”
I turned toward her.
“Then maybe stop volunteering details about my divorce to strangers.”
Her smile disappeared.
Julian pushed the envelope closer.
“Open it.”
Garrison picked it up first.
“Give me that,” Julian snapped.
Garrison ignored him.
He turned the envelope over.
Something on the back made his face change.
It was small.
A tightening around his eyes.
Then he looked at Julian differently.
Not angry.
Alert.
Julian saw it too.
He lunged.
Garrison moved the envelope behind his back.
“Don’t touch her.”
Julian stopped less than a foot away.
I looked at the envelope again.
There was no return address.
Only my name on the front.
Emma Carter.
Typed.
On the back was a red evidence seal.
And beneath it, handwritten in black ink:
CAROLINAS REPRODUCTIVE LABS — INTERNAL COPY.
My mouth went dry.
I knew that name.
Two years earlier, Julian and I had undergone fertility testing there.
Before the affair.
Before the divorce papers.
Before I became pregnant after believing I might never be.
I looked at Julian.
“What’s in that envelope?”
He didn’t answer.
Garrison did.
“You should ask him why an internal medical file is in his pocket.”
The entire room seemed to narrow around us.
Julian held out his hand.
“Garrison.”
“No.”
“That document belongs to me.”
I stared at my ex-husband.
Then at the evidence seal.
May you like
And suddenly the question was no longer whether Julian believed my twins were his.
The question was how he had gotten into a sealed reproductive-medicine file that I had never received.
