“Leave. Now. Before I call security,” Diane ordered.
I straightened my spine, adjusting Ethan on my hip. A strange, cold calm washed over me, the kind that only comes when you realize there is nothing left to lose. I turned toward the door, my heels clicking a defiant rhythm against the hardwood. I was ready to walk out into the night, ready to disappear into the fog of a broken life if it meant Ethan would never have to grow up around people this cruel.
But then, the heavy front door swung open from the outside.
A man in a charcoal suit stood there, looking harried and out of breath, clutching a leather briefcase like a shield. His eyes scanned the room, landing first on the paper in my hand, and then on Julian. He looked like he had run a marathon, his tie slightly askew and sweat beading on his forehead.
“I believe,” the stranger said, his voice cutting through the tension with the precision of a scalpel, “we need to talk about that DNA test immediately. I am Dr. Aris Thorne, the Chief of Labs at North Valley Diagnostics.”
The room froze. Diane’s hand, still pointed at the door, began to shake, and I saw a flash of genuine terror cross Julian’s face as the man stepped over the threshold.
“What is the meaning of this?” Diane snapped, regaining her composure. “We’ve already received the results. The matter is settled.”
“The matter is far from settled, Mrs. Hale,” Dr. Thorne said, walking toward the center of the room. He didn’t look at me; he looked directly at Diane. “I received an anonymous tip this evening regarding a security breach in our database. When I checked the logs for the test registered to Julian Hale, I found something deeply disturbing.”
Julian stepped forward, his brow furrowed. “A breach? What are you talking about?”
Dr. Thorne opened his briefcase and pulled out a fresh set of documents. “The report you are holding, the one stating a $0%$ probability of paternity, was manually overridden in our system. Someone accessed the technician’s terminal three nights ago and swapped the digital files. The physical samples, however, were still in our secure cold storage.”
I felt the world tilt. I reached out a hand to steady myself against the wall, my breath catching in my throat. “Swapped?” I whispered.
