Betrayed Broken Husband Becomes a Billionaire Daddy

7: Your Plans, My Rules

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 toward the door for half a second before they came back.

"Sure you do." Lucien Legion leaned forward, elbows on his knees, closing some of the distance between them. "A question like that, most people take a second. They frown, they think it over, maybe they get a little offended I'd even ask. You didn't do any of that. You went straight to no."

Donald Mccallister's mouth opened, then closed again. For a moment he looked like a man recalculating a route he thought he already knew.

"I represent her business affairs, Mr. Legion. Not her personal life. If you're asking whether I keep a list of every man who's ever looked twice at Stacy, then no, I don't, and frankly I resent the implication that I would."

"Nobody said list." Lucien Legion tilted his head slightly, watching the color climb up the other man's neck. "I asked one name. You gave me a whole speech instead."

Donald Mccallister set the folder down flat on his knee, a small motion, but it looked to Lucien Legion like a man trying to put something between himself and the conversation.

"I think we're done here for today." Donald Mccallister's voice had cooled several degrees, all the earlier warmth gone out of it. "The sample, Mr. Legion. Are we doing this or not?"

Lucien Legion studied him a moment longer. He had gotten nothing he could hold up in a courtroom, nothing he could repeat to anyone without sounding paranoid, and yet every instinct he had, the same instincts that told him when a chart didn't match a patient's color, when a story didn't match an injury, was screaming that this man knew something he wasn't saying.

Arguing wouldn't get it out of him. Not today.

"Fine." Lucien Legion straightened up in his chair, some of the sharpness draining out of his posture, replaced by a flat, businesslike calm. "I'll give the sample."

Something in Donald Mccallister's shoulders eased, just slightly.

"But not through your lab." Lucien Legion held up a hand before the other man could speak. "And not the way you people want to run it."

"Excuse me?"

"I want an independent collector. Someone with no connection to Stacy, no connection to you, no connection to whatever lab you've already picked out." Lucien Legion counted the points off on his fingers, unhurried. "Chain of custody documented from the second the swab touches my mouth. Sealed in front of a witness who isn't on anybody's payroll. Signed, dated, photographed, and sent to a lab I choose, not the one Stacy's office already has on speed dial."

Donald Mccallister's smile came back on, but it looked stiffer this time, stretched thin over something else entirely. "That sounds excessive, Mr. Legion. We're not running a criminal investigation. This is a family matter."

"Funny." Lucien Legion's eyes didn't move off his face. "Family matters don't usually need a lawyer showing up at a courthouse to negotiate DNA logistics."

That landed. Donald Mccallister's jaw worked once, and for a second the composure slipped just enough for Lucien Legion to see something underneath it that looked almost like worry.

"I'll have to run that by Stacy." Donald Mccallister stood, buttoning his jacket, the leather folder tucked back under his arm like a shield. "Independent collection, third party lab, full documentation. That's what you're asking for."

"That's exactly what I'm asking for." Lucien Legion stood as well, not offering a hand. "If there's nothing to hide, none of that should be a problem."

"Nothing to hide." Donald Mccallister repeated it back slowly, like he was testing the weight of the words in his own mouth. "Of course."

He turned toward the door, and for the first time since he'd walked in, he seemed eager to leave, his steps a little quicker than the calm, practiced entrance he'd made an hour earlier.

Lucien Legion watched him go, then followed a few paces behind, close enough to see Donald Mccallister pull his phone out before he'd even cleared the waiting room doors.

The glass door swung shut behind him, but it didn't latch all the way, and through the narrow gap Lucien Legion heard the low murmur of Donald Mccallister's voice, already talking before the phone could have finished ringing on the other end.

Lucien Legion stopped just inside the doorway and listened.

"He agreed."