Chapter 5 - THE DOUBLE TWIST
The silence in the grand foyer was broken only by the grandfather clock ticking heavily in the corner.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket with trembling fingers. Beatrice watched me, her eyes hollow and desperate, while Arthur stood beside me with quiet, sorrowful dignity.
"Let's see what else the science says," I whispered, unlocking the screen and tapping open the secure PDF report from the laboratory.
I scrolled past the first page—the comparison between Lily and Julian’s DNA profile.
My eyes locked onto the percentage match, and the breath completely left my lungs.
Paternity Probability: 0.00%.
Julian Vance was not Lily’s biological father.
I stared at the screen in absolute, paralyzing shock. For five years, I had believed Julian was her father. For five years, I had tolerated his mother's abuse because I thought we shared a child. But the genetic test was mathematically absolute. Julian had no biological connection to my daughter whatsoever.
"What is it, Clara?" Arthur asked gently, noticing the color draining from my face.
I turned the phone screen toward them both. Beatrice looked at the numbers, and a strange, bitter laugh escaped her lips—a sound devoid of any humor, filled only with decades of tragic irony.
"So," Beatrice muttered, shaking her head. "Julian isn't even a Vance by blood. And now... your little girl isn't a Vance either."
"Shut up, Beatrice," I snapped, my mind racing at a million miles an hour. If Julian wasn't Lily’s father... then who was?
I scrolled further down the comprehensive familial report, looking at the extended maternal and paternal cousin matches generated by the laboratory database. The algorithm cross-referenced our family tree with millions of global profiles to find biological relatives.
A high-confidence paternal match appeared at the top of the extended tree.
Primary Paternal Match: 99.98% Shared DNA. Relationship: Father. Name on Registry: Lucas Vance.
I froze. Lucas Vance?
There was no Lucas Vance in our family tree. Julian was an only child. Victor Vance had no other legitimate sons.
"Who is Lucas Vance?" I asked aloud, staring at the screen in bewilderment.
Beatrice’s face went completely grey. She staggered backward, gripping the edge of the staircase railing for support, her eyes wide with absolute horror.
"No," Beatrice whispered, her voice shaking violently. "That's... that's impossible. Victor swore to me he destroyed all the records."
"What are you talking about, Beatrice?" Arthur demanded, stepping closer to her. "Who is Lucas?"
Beatrice looked at us, tears finally spilling over her mascara-stained eyelids. The unbreakable iron matriarch had been utterly crushed by the weight of her own family's sins.
"Victor didn't just have one secret affair forty years ago," Beatrice sobbed softly. "He had two. Julian was the child of the housekeeper... whom Victor stole and raised as his own heir to spite me because I couldn't give him a traditional son. But years later... Victor had another son with a young woman working in our Manhattan office. A boy named Lucas."
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Where is Lucas now?"
Beatrice looked at me with tragic, tear-filled eyes. "Victor banished Lucas from the family when he was twenty years old because Lucas refused to participate in the firm's illegal financial schemes. Victor stripped him of his inheritance, changed the family wills, and wiped him from our lives. Lucas left Arlington... and went underground."
The puzzle pieces snapped together with terrifying clarity.
Lily wasn't Julian’s daughter. She was Lucas Vance’s daughter—conceived during a brief, passionate summer romance I had experienced six years ago in Boston before I ever met Julian, with a quiet, brilliant architect named Lucas whose last name I never knew, and whom I lost touch with before I realized I was pregnant.
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Lily belonged to the Vance family after all. But not to the monster who had chained her to a porch post.
She belonged to the outcast.
