Chapter 5 - The Test Nobody Authorized
The report said Lucas Mercer was the father.
Ava knew immediately that it was fake.
She had never consented to prenatal DNA testing.
Dr. Hart confirmed no such test existed in Ava's medical records.
Someone had manufactured evidence.
The question was why.
Lucas sat across from Ava and Daniel inside a conference room at Choi Meridian the next morning.
For the first time in two years, Ava saw him without love clouding her vision.
He looked ordinary.
That shocked her.
She had spent weeks believing the man who abandoned her had possessed some extraordinary ability to break her.
Now he was simply a frightened thirty-one-year-old man in an expensive jacket.
"Did you ever love me?" Ava asked.
Lucas looked down.
Daniel remained silent beside her.
"Ava—"
"Answer."
Lucas swallowed.
"Yes."
"When?"
"What?"
"When did loving me start? Before or after Richard Vale paid you?"
Daniel's eyes moved toward Lucas.
Lucas looked ashamed.
"After."
Ava's throat tightened.
"So meeting me was planned."
"Yes."
"And the relationship?"
"Not after the first few months."
She stared at him.
Strangely, the truth hurt less than uncertainty.
"Why did you leave?"
"Vale told me to."
"Why?"
"Because your father's collapse was ready. They needed you isolated enough to accept the marriage."
Daniel's hand tightened on the table.
Ava noticed.
Lucas did too.
Daniel said nothing.
That silence carried more force than shouting would have.
Ava continued.
"Are you the father?"
Lucas looked at her.
"I don't know."
"Don't lie."
"I'm not."
She froze.
Daniel turned slightly.
Lucas rubbed both hands over his face.
"We weren't together that night."
Ava's pulse surged.
"What?"
"The night you think we were."
Ava stared.
Then memory shifted.
A charity gala in Baltimore.
Too much champagne.
A fight with Lucas.
She had gone home alone.
Of course.
The date she'd been counting was wrong.
There had been intimacy with Lucas earlier—but not within the likely conception window Dr. Hart had given.
Ava's face went cold.
"Then who?"
Lucas looked toward Daniel.
Ava followed his gaze.
Daniel's expression became confused.
Then something changed.
A memory.
Ava saw it happen.
Daniel stood abruptly.
"Lake Geneva."
Ava's heart stopped.
Three months earlier.
A corporate charity weekend.
She had attended with her father.
Daniel had been there.
They had met.
Briefly.
Except—
Not briefly.
Ava's memories returned in fragments.
A storm.
A hotel bar.
Her father arguing with someone downstairs.
Ava stepping outside onto a covered terrace.
A stranger standing there.
Daniel.
She hadn't known his name.
He hadn't told her.
They talked for hours.
Not about money.
Not about families.
About ordinary things.
Books.
Cities.
The pressure of disappointing parents.
Then they had kissed.
Ava slowly covered her mouth.
Daniel stared at her.
"You left before I woke up," he said.
Her voice barely existed.
"You were Daniel?"
Lucas looked between them.
Ava remembered the dark hotel room.
A night she had buried beneath the catastrophe that followed.
She had never known the stranger's surname.
Daniel had never known hers.
Weeks later, when her father showed her Daniel Choi's formal photograph, he looked different—hair styled, suit, controlled expression—and Ava had been too overwhelmed to connect him with the man from the lake.
"You knew?" she asked Lucas.
Lucas nodded.
"Vale found the hotel footage."
Daniel's entire posture changed.
"That's why they forced the marriage."
"Yes."
Ava couldn't breathe.
The marriage hadn't been designed simply to control Daniel.
Victor knew there was a possibility Ava was already carrying Daniel's child.
A biological heir.
Someone who could destroy Victor's path to the family trust.
Daniel looked at Ava.
Neither spoke.
Dr. Hart was called immediately.
A legitimate test could establish paternity safely through maternal blood once clinically appropriate and arranged through proper medical channels.
The wait felt endless.
When the results finally came, Ava asked Daniel to open them.
His hands—hands she had never seen tremble—shook once.
He read the first line.
Then stopped.
Ava's heartbeat pounded.
"Daniel?"
He looked up.
Eight years of believing he could never have a biological child collided with a single sheet of paper.
His eyes filled.
Ava had never seen him cry.
"Daniel?"
He crossed the space between them slowly.
Then placed the report in her hands.
Probability of paternity:
99.99%.
Ava stopped breathing.
The baby was Daniel's.
Not Lucas's.
Not a scandal.
Not proof of betrayal.
Daniel's.
Ava looked up.
He was staring at her stomach as though the universe had just returned something stolen from him years earlier.
"You're going to be a father," she whispered.
Daniel closed his eyes.
A single tear slipped down his cheek.
Then Nathan rushed into the room.
His expression destroyed the moment.
"Daniel."
Daniel turned.
"What?"
"Victor knows the real test was done."
Daniel's face hardened.
Nathan placed a tablet on the table.
"The board meeting has been moved up."
"To when?"
Nathan checked his watch.
"Forty-five minutes."
"And Victor already filed his challenge."
Ava stared at the paternity report.
May you like
Their baby had just become proof of something far larger than either of them had imagined.
And now they had forty-five minutes to stop an entire family empire from being stolen.
