After four daughters, my husband finally got the son he'd spent years praying for. But minutes after our baby was born, Julian looked at his dark hair and demanded a paternity test because he thought I'd been unfaithful. I knew the results would prove Gabriel was his. While waiting for the test, something appeared on his tablet that made me understand he behaved that way.

The next morning, I was discharged from the hospital.

True to her word, Victoria had arranged for a private medical van to pick me up at the side entrance. My mother, Helen, was waiting inside the van, her eyes red from crying after I called her the previous evening to explain everything.

When Helen held Gabriel for the first time, she wept openly, kissing his soft, dark hair.

“He has your grandfather’s hair, Delilah,” my mother whispered, brushing Gabriel’s soft forehead. “My father had pitch-black, wavy hair until the day he died. Julian is a fool. A arrogant, blind fool.”

We drove to my late father’s estate—a beautiful, secure forty-acre property overlooking Lake Johnson that had been left entirely to me in a private family trust.

Over the next seventy-two hours, while we waited for the DNA results, Victoria Sterling turned my father’s old mahogany library into an operational command center.

Victoria sat across from me at the large conference table, reviewing printouts of the files I had photographed on Julian’s tablet.

“Let’s analyze Julian’s strategy,” Victoria said, tapping her gold pen against a legal pad. “Julian knew that your father’s trust—which is currently valued at roughly four point five million dollars in commercial real estate holdings—is protected by a ironclad prenuptial agreement. Under normal circumstances, in a standard no-fault divorce, Julian gets zero percent of that trust, and you get primary physical custody of the children along with child support based on his architectural director salary.”

“So why draft the fault-based document?” I asked, nursing Gabriel while he drank from his bottle.

“Because under old North Carolina marital statutes,” Victoria explained, “if a husband can convincingly prove egregious marital misconduct—specifically, conceiving a child with another man while maintaining a marital home—it creates an opening to challenge the equitable distribution of marital property and argue that the mother is morally unfit for sole custody. Julian was planning to use Gabriel as his silver bullet to force you into a settlement where you surrendered control of your trust funds in exchange for joint custody of the girls.”

I felt a cold rage burning in my chest. “He used our baby as leverage before he was even born.”

“Precisely,” Victoria said. “He was banking on you panicking. He thought you would be so devastated by the public humiliation of a paternity accusation that you would agree to whatever terms his lawyers presented.”

At that moment, the front oak door opened, and my four daughters came running into the hallway.

My mother had picked them up from Julian’s house an hour earlier under the pretext of taking them out for ice cream and a weekend sleepover at Grandma’s house. Julian had agreed without hesitation because he was too busy pacing around his empty house waiting for the lab email.

“Mommy!” eight-year-old Sophia cried, throwing her arms around my neck.

Six-year-old Maya, four-year-old Clara, and two-year-old Lily piled around my chair, their little hands reaching out to touch their new baby brother.

“Is he Gabriel?” Clara asked softly, pointing her tiny finger at his nose. “Why does Dad say he’s staying at the doctor’s office?”

My heart seized. “What did your father tell you, Clara?”

Sophia looked up at me, her young face carrying an adult level of worry that no eight-year-old should ever have to bear.

“Dad was crying yesterday, Mommy,” Sophia said quietly. “He said you were sick and that Gabriel had to stay in a special hospital for a while. He told us not to unpack Gabriel’s clothes in the nursery.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, kissing Sophia’s forehead.

“Gabriel is perfectly fine, sweetie,” I told her, holding my daughters close. “He’s right here with us. And you’re all staying here with Grandma and me for a little while.”

“Is Dad coming?” Maya asked.

Before I could answer, my cell phone, sitting on the table beside Victoria’s laptop, began to vibrate frantically.

The caller ID displayed a single word: Julian.

Simultaneously, Victoria’s laptop chimed with an incoming high-priority email alert from GeneTech Forensics.