Oh god.
"Hernecklace," he corrects, grinning like he won the lottery and can't quite believe it. "I almost had three tests done, but my lawyer assured me using two different testing facilities would offer more than enough certainty to know beyond a shadow of a doubt."
There's a ringing in my ears, and he's lying. He has to be lying, right?
But I think back, and I remember. I remember that they took both a hair sample and a swab on the inside of my cheek.Protocol,Linette had said. Like it was totally normal to take two different samples.
I didn't even question it.
"Aurora, are you well? You look a bit pale."
"Oh, I'm fine," I rush to say. "It's like you said—all so surreal. The fact that you didtwotests… I mean, to be honest, I was sort of thinking that maybe the people who did the test got it wrong and this was all—" I swallow. "Some big mistake, you know?"
Sloppy recovery, but it'll have to do. I can barely hear my own voice over the roaring in my ears. My palms are slick, and I rub them into the napkin on my lap, feeling sweat trickle down my side beneath my shirt.
He reaches across the table, and I hold my breath as he wraps his vile fingers around my arm, giving it what is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. But makes me want to be violently ill.
"No mistakes here, my daughter."
I taste bile in the back of my throat and force it back down. Force myself to smile through the burn in my eyes that I hope he reads as me being overcome with positive emotion instead of the most harrowing shame I've ever felt in my life.
My daughter.
Not Aurora Bellerose.Delilah De La Rosa.
He could still be lying.
My mind's vain attempt to gaslight itself doesn't hold water this time. I need to know.Reallyknow. Even if it breaks me.
Ambrose pulls his hand back to his side of the table, and I swallow past the lump in my throat. "Do you think I could see them?" I ask. "The results, I mean."
He draws out his phone from the inner pocket of his dinner jacket. "Hearing secondhand isn't the same as seeing it for yourself."
"Exactly." I smile tightly.
"I'll have Linette email them to you."
"No," I say far too quickly, and mentally slap myself for my lack of control right now. "I mean, do you have access to them on your phone? To see for myself. I don't need copies or anything."
Definitely not sent directly to the fucking laptop Atticus has cloned in the laundromat.
My heart beats hard behind my rib cage, and it's a struggle not to squirm in my seat or, better yet, run right back out thedoor of this restaurant before he can show me a truth I'd rather not know.
His brow lifts, but he snaps his fingers, and his private security appears a moment later with a pair of reading glasses open and ready for him to quickly slip onto his face.
"I do believe I have it here in my email. One moment."
One moment is like an eternity.
"Ah. Here it is."
He rises and comes around the table instead of handing me his phone like I'd hoped he would.
Ambrose crouches next to my seat, and I release the death grip I have on the napkin, making my hands still, folding them all ladylike in my lap.
He holds out the phone so I can see, and I notice how he smells like thick musk and pine. He taps the screen to zoom in, and I can't hear a word he's saying as he scrolls through two very similar documents, showing one with a seal on it I recognize from Atticus's files. And another I don't recognize, but that appears to be equally legitimate.
Bothhave the same number under a line that says 'probability of parentage'.
