Daniel raised a hand, silencing her. Then he placed a folder on the table.
“The real results are in there,” he said calmly. “Court-certified. I had the test done six weeks ago—after Lydia mailed a fake one to my office.”
I stared at him, stunned.
He finally looked at me, his voice softening. “I never doubted you. I just needed proof before I exposed this.”
No one spoke.
Then the doorbell rang.
Daniel checked his phone. “Perfect,” he said. “My lawyer’s here.”
And just like that, the dinner table stopped being their stage.
It became their downfall.
The silence afterward felt suffocating.
Lydia laughed nervously. “You brought a lawyer? Seriously?”
“I came prepared,” Daniel said.
His father opened the folder with trembling hands, scanning the documents. “Probability of paternity… greater than 99.999 percent,” he read aloud.
Lydia tried to interrupt, but he snapped, louder than I’d ever heard, “That’s enough. And the video says the rest.”
Carol stood abruptly. “We need to calm down—”
“You let her say that to a child,” he shot back.
That word—child—hung in the air.
The door opened, and Daniel returned with a composed woman in a charcoal coat, briefcase in hand. She introduced herself as his attorney.