“Read the first report.”
“I read it.”
“Then read it out loud.”
His eyes burned into mine.
He didn’t.
So I did.
“The fertility testing confirms that Grant
Whitmore has congenital azoospermia and has been incapable of biological paternity since birth.”
A gasp moved through the room.
Grant’s mother stood up.
“What?”
Richard Whitmore’s face hardened.
Sloane began shaking her head.
“She’s lying.”
I looked at her.
“Would you like to explain the second report?”
She said nothing.
Grant lifted it.
His eyes moved across the page.
Then stopped.
He looked at Elliot.
Elliot was standing near the back of the room.
Grant’s voice became almost unrecognizable.
“Why is your name on this?”
Nobody breathed.
“Elliot?”
Sloane moved quickly.
“Grant, listen to me.”
He backed away from her.
“Why is my brother’s name on a paternity test?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Is the baby mine?”
Sloane’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Grant turned toward Elliot.
“Answer me.”
Elliot looked at Sloane.
She stared back at him with naked warning.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
That single word told Grant more than any
laboratory report ever could.
He stumbled backward.
“No.”
Elliot stepped forward.
“I’m sorry.”
Grant stared at him.
“No.”
“Grant—”
“Don’t say my name.”
Elliot swallowed.
“The baby is mine.”
The room erupted.
Someone dropped a champagne glass.
Grant’s mother collapsed back into her chair.
Richard muttered something vicious.
Sloane rushed toward Grant.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
Grant recoiled.
“You slept with my brother?”
“You wouldn’t listen to me!”
“What does that even mean?”
“You wanted a son!”
“So you slept with Elliot?”
“You couldn’t give me one!”
Silence.
Sloane seemed to realize what she had said one second too late.
Grant’s face changed.
Not heartbreak.
Humiliation.
The kind he had once forced me to carry.
Sloane turned toward Elliot.
“You told me you wouldn’t say anything.”
Elliot looked sick.
“You told me Grant knew.”
“He was never supposed to find out!”
Grant laughed.
A hollow, broken sound.
Then Richard’s voice cut through the room.
“Everybody stop.”
He was no longer looking at Sloane.
He was looking at me.
“What else do you have?”
Smart man.
Because Richard Whitmore understood something his son never had.
I would not have come there merely to expose an affair.
I smiled faintly.
“My attorney can answer that.”
