Lucien Legion stared at the paper in his hand until the words stopped making sense and started making sense all over again.NO BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP.Fifteen years. He had raised her for fifteen years and she wasn't his.His hands shook on the steering wheel. The parking lot outside the lab blurred through the windshield like the whole world had been dunked in water.He thought about Stacy. About the day they met at twenty four, about the wedding, about believing for sixteen straight years that he had built something real.Stacy had come from money. An only child, spoiled rotten by a family that owned half of downtown. When Lucien Legion met her she was nobody, just another actress getting rejected at every audition in town. He was the one who paid rent. He was the one who told her she'd make it someday when nobody else believed her.Then eight years ago a show blew up and suddenly she was the biggest name in the country. Magazine covers. Endorsement deals. A face nobody could scrol

Stacy was still stunning at forty. Money and rest and careful living had kept her looking closer to twenty eight, and fame had only added a shine that made men everywhere fall over themselves for a chance with her.Lucien Legion had never expected her to just confess to whatever she'd been hiding.But he trusted the tests. Three separate labs. DNA didn't care about her name or her fans.Stacy tilted her head at him, amused. "What's wrong with you? Since when did you turn insecure?" A small laugh escaped her. "You're underestimating yourself. And you're underestimating me.""Maybe." Lucien Legion kept his eyes locked on hers, steady and cold. "But the more I sit here, the more sure I am that you've been sleeping with someone else this whole time."The smile dropped off her face like it had never been there."What kind of nonsense is that?" Her voice sharpened, each word clipped. "A joke's only funny for so long, Lucien Legion. Don't push it, or I'm actually going to get angry."That wa

Inside the bar, the lights were dimmer than the night before, and the same bartender who'd been wiping glasses last night was doing the exact same thing now."I need to talk to the owner." Lucien Legion kept his voice level. "Short blond hair. She was here last night."The bartender's eyes flicked up, then back down to the glass in his hand. "Owner's not in tonight.""Then when is she in.""Couldn't say."Lucien Legion pressed his palms flat on the bar counter, leaning in. "Look, she paid for a hotel room under my name last night. I want to pay her back and I want to know exactly what happened. That's it. I'm not here to cause trouble."The bartender shrugged, wiping the same spot on the glass he'd already wiped twice. "I just work the bar, man. I don't know anything about hotel rooms.""Can I see the footage from last night. The cameras." Lucien Legion gestured toward the small black dome mounted near the ceiling in the corner."System's down. Been down for repairs since yesterday mo

Donald Mccallister did not answer right away, and that pause said more than the smile ever could."No." He shook his head, a fraction too fast. "I don't know who Chloe's father is, Mr. Legion. I wouldn't have any reason to know something like that."Lucien Legion sat back and let the silence stretch. He had learned, years ago, standing over patients whose families lied to him about symptoms out of embarrassment or fear, that the truth rarely came out on the first answer. It came out in the space right after it, in whatever the person did with their hands while they waited to see if the lie had landed.Donald Mccallister's hands moved to the folder on his knee, straightening papers that were already straight."You answered fast." Lucien Legion kept his voice even, almost gentle, the way he talked to nervous patients before a procedure. "Faster than a man usually answers a question he's never once thought about.""I don't follow." Donald Mccallister's jaw tightened, his eyes flicking to

Stacy's penthouse sat thirty floors above the city, all white marble and glass, the kind of place built to be photographed rather than lived in. Donald Mccallister found her standing at the window when he arrived, a glass of wine untouched on the counter behind her, her reflection ghosted over the skyline."He wants everything documented." Donald Mccallister set his folder down on the counter, loosening his tie. "Chain of custody forms, witnesses, photographs of the sample. I've never seen a man that careful about a DNA swab in my life.""He's a surgeon." Stacy didn't turn around. "Careful is the whole job.""Careful is a problem for us." Donald Mccallister rubbed the back of his neck. "The plan we discussed needs room to move, Stacy. Room to adjust a result quietly, without twelve signatures and time stamped photos standing in the way."Stacy finally turned, and the calm mask she wore for cameras had slipped somewhere on the way up the elevator. What was left underneath looked tired,