A strange calm came over Dorothy then—not relief, exactly, but clarity.
Grant had cheated, stolen, manipulated, forged documents, and humiliated Colleen while assuming every child she carried would bear his name and feed his ego.
The truth was worse for him than any affair could have been.
Those babies existed because Colleen chose motherhood over his vanity.
“What happens now?” Dorothy asked.
“His claim weakens dramatically,” Emmett said. “Especially with the financial fraud and the affair. A non-biological, non-adoptive father can still argue emotional parentage, but his credibility is shredded.”
“And Vivian?”
A dry sound came from Emmett’s throat that might have been almost a laugh. “Vivian thought she had won.”
For roughly forty-eight hours, Vivian did believe that. She told friends Colleen must have cheated. She reportedly cried to Grant that they were the real victims in all of this. For a brief, ugly window of time, she convinced herself the DNA results vindicated everything.
Then Emmett released the fertility clinic records under court authority.
The donor consent form.
The medical notes on Grant’s nonviable samples.
The journal entry.
The timeline.
Overnight, the narrative flipped.