Page 29 of Discretion at Its Finest

No denial or lies. Her response to me alone made me understand that everything I’d believed about her was already gone.

“How long have you been seeing Gregory?” I asked when I found out the news.

And instead of an answer? She responded with, “Does it matter?”

At the time, when I was cast away, when nothing mattered anymore, it didn’t… but now? Now it mattered more than anything.

I shut the folder halfway, then opened it again. I couldn’t stop looking at the data. The more I read, the more it started to look like evidence, more like a reason to do what I was about to do.

My Vieve,mon amour…

She was precise. Smart, resourceful, deliberate. She knew how to hide.

How to pretend.How to fucking lie.

The requisition slip for Eugene’s bloodwork sat on top, waiting to be sent off. It was for a routine panel. Nothing unusual.

It would’ve been easy. One more barcode… one more destination to send the blood off to. One call to a private lab that still owed me favors. It would just be a small adjustment. No one would notice.

I closed the folder, the weight of it heavy in my hands.

Because that would be insane. This was me being paranoid… But there would be no confrontation, no need to say a word until I had evidence in my hand.

My gaze shifted to the boy beside me. This would change everything.

If I went through with this… there was no going back. No undoing it or pretending it hadn’t mattered.

I couldn’t look her in the eye and pretend my coming back was still about ruining the Newman name. About my fractured ego or payback, revenge, vengeance…

Because it wasn’t about any of that anymore. It was abouther. Taking back what was fucking mine.

And the second I had those results in hand, the answers she’d never given me… there’d be no more lying. No more hiding behind the family name or a husband she never really chose. She could no longer pretend I didn’t belong in this picture.

If this boy beside me… this small, bright thing with my eyes and my fucking blood type… if he was mine? If he had been mine all along? Then she didn’t deserve the life that she fabricated. This role she played behind her lies, the safety she claimed she had? She deserved none of it.

She wouldn’t deserve the peace she wanted so desperately to have. Not when she had already ruined me. Stolen from me. Made me suffer…

Once I had the truth, she wouldn’t be able to hide behind her lies… and she definitely wouldn’t be able to hide from me.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I filled in the private lab’s details, mimicked the doctor’s initials beside them, before setting the folder back onto the desk.

Eugene leaned over, his head resting on my arm as he toyed with the cube again, drowsiness softening the edges of his face. My chest filled with an indistinguishable warmth, one that made my mind short-circuit only for a split second.

I’d know the answer for certain in two weeks, but something in my gut told me what I already knew years ago, what I refused to say out loud.

That I was robbed of a family thatshouldhave been mine.

A son thatcouldhave been mine… all because of a woman whowas still mine.

A woman who fucking belonged to me.

And that same woman needed a reminder. Whether she was ready for it or not.

Chapter thirteen

Genevieve

Gregory’s soft snores carried faintly down the hall, proof he was dead to the world upstairs. I should’ve felt safe in the quiet of my own home, but my skin prickled as though someone was watching me.