Chapter 9 - Begging on his Knees
As the federal agents dragged Julian toward the front doors, he turned back, dropping to his knees on the wet gravel driveway in the pouring rain, weeping hysterically.
"Elena! Please!" Julian begged, his voice cracking against the sound of thunder. "Don't submit that DNA test to the court! If you release that, the Vance trust revokes my inheritance completely! I’ll have nothing! I’ll go to prison for life!"
I walked out onto the covered porch, standing side by side with Luka. The rain poured down in sheets around us, but not a single drop touched me or my daughter under the broad roof.
"You left me on a cold hospital floor, Julian," I said, looking down at the shivering, pathetic man who had once tried to destroy my life. "You told me to call you when I could think clearly. Well... I am thinking clearly now."
I turned to Agent Miller, the lead investigator standing beside the police cruisers. "Submit every document to the federal court. Freeze every asset he owns. Let him rot."
"No! Elena! Please!" Julian shrieked as he was forced into the back of the police car, his cries swallowed whole by the roaring storm as the red security lights faded down the long driveway.
Luka turned to me in the quiet darkness of the porch. The storm raged outside, but inside his chest, I could hear the calm, steady rhythm of his heart.
May you like
"You knew all along?" I asked softly, looking up at him. "When you signed the birth certificate in the hospital..."
"I knew she was my daughter from the moment your father created the file," Luka admitted, reaching out to gently trace the soft outline of Maya's tiny chin. "But I didn't sign that paper just because of biology, Elena. I signed it because the moment I saw you holding her in that cold hallway... I knew my life didn't belong to the military or the shadows anymore. It belonged to both of you."
