Chapter 6 - The Paternity Bomb
"Julian," Chloe’s voice was high-pitched and trembling. She was gripping the edges of the sweetheart table, looking at the medical files that had cycled back onto the screen. "Julian... what does that mean? A zero sperm count? That’s impossible."
I turned my attention to the bride.
"That’s the most interesting part of the evening, Chloe," I said, offering her a look of mock sympathy. "If Julian is completely, irreversibly sterile..."
I pointed at her rounded stomach.
"...then whose baby is that?"
The marquee erupted into pure chaos. People were shouting. Eleanor Vance clutched her chest and collapsed into her chair.
Julian whipped his head around to stare at his new wife. The realization hit him like a freight train. The delusion he had been desperately clinging to—that somehow the doctors were wrong, that his virility had miraculously returned—shattered in an instant.
"Chloe..." Julian breathed out, his eyes wide with horror. "Who...?"
Chloe burst into hysterical tears. "I—I didn't know! I thought it was yours! I swear!"
The screen clicked one final time.
It was a DNA testing kit receipt, ordered by Chloe Sterling, delivered to a private P.O. Box three months ago. And right next to it, a photo taken by a private investigator.
It showed Chloe, passionately kissing a man in the parking lot of a secluded boutique hotel.
The man in the photo was sitting at table number two.
Julian’s best man. Marcus.
May you like
Marcus stood up so fast his chair tipped backward and crashed to the floor. He looked at the screen, looked at Julian, and immediately threw his hands up in surrender. "Julian, man, listen—it was one time in Aspen! You guys were on a break!"
"A BREAK?!" Julian screamed, launching himself at his best man. The two of them crashed into a towering champagne pyramid, sending hundreds of glass flutes and expensive wine shattering across the marble dance floor.
