Chapter 6 - The empty drawer
I followed Valerie inside.
“Stop!”
She reached the staircase.
My security manager intercepted her.
“I forgot my purse!”
“Your purse is outside,” I said.
She froze.
I went upstairs.
Marco followed.
So did Megan.
My office door was unlocked.
It should not have been.
The bottom drawer was open.
Empty.
My corporate seal was gone.
Signature files gone.
Leo’s sealed records gone.
I turned toward Marco.
“What did you take?”
“Nothing.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I live here.”
“You don’t have authorization to access corporate documents.”
“They’re in our house!”
“And they belong to my company.”
Megan was already calling corporate counsel.
Then I noticed something beneath the desk.
A torn corner of red paper.
I picked it up.
It came from an envelope.
A laboratory logo was visible.
Not Leo’s fertility clinic.
A private DNA laboratory.
My stomach tightened.
“Marco?”
He looked away.
“What did you test?”
No answer.
“Who did you test?”
Valerie shouted from the hallway:
“Tell her!”
Marco snapped:
“Shut up!”
Everything stopped.
Valerie laughed bitterly.
“You promised me.”
“Valerie.”
“You said once she signed, you’d tell her everything.”
I walked toward her.
“Tell me now.”
She stared at Marco.
Then me.
“I’m not Leo’s mother.”
I already knew that.
But hearing her admit it destroyed the entire public performance.
“Then why claim you were?”
“Because Marco needed you to believe there was a custody problem.”
“Why?”
“So you’d sign.”
“And the DNA test?”
She hesitated.
Marco grabbed her arm.
“Enough.”
She jerked away.
“No. You brought me into this.”
“You volunteered.”
“You said I’d get ten percent!”
Marco’s face tightened.
My company.
Again.
I asked:
“Ten percent of what?”
Valerie looked directly at me.
“Bennett & Vale.”
Marco shouted:
“She’s lying!”
Valerie laughed.
“Of course I am. Apparently that’s what you hired me for.”
Then she turned toward me.
“The test wasn’t about me.”
My heartbeat became painfully loud.
“Who was it about?”
Valerie looked toward the garden.
Toward Leo.
“Marco.”
For one terrifying second, I misunderstood.
Then she clarified.
“He tested whether Leo was his biological son.”
I stared at my husband.
“Why?”
Marco’s face had gone gray.
May you like
And Valerie delivered the answer he had desperately tried to keep hidden.
“Because he already knew he wasn’t.”
