13. Dane
DANE
The email that turns my life upside down comes in while I’m working the next day.
From the clinic. It’s discreet, and I have to put in Stephie’s date of birth to access it.
Yes, yes, immoral to look at her private medical information, but I never pretended to be anything but a controlling, possessive bastard, and this is my child, and Stephie doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to be my wife.
So I open the document and scan through the various test results. All normal. No issues.
And at the bottom there’s the item I was after. The DNA analysis.
My heart stops.
I can’t breathe.
This is impossible.
I blink rapidly, convinced I’m seeing things. Because in glowing black and white is the result of the paternity test.
And the father is me.
Somehow, I’m not just the adopted parent of Stephie’s child, I’m the biological father too. I reread it, to be sure, and buzzing escalates in the back of my head. There are lots of ways this could have happened, but the most likely?
It wasn’t a dream.
I rest my elbows on the desk as shock rolls through me. The night in the cabin, when I was drugged, I thought I hallucinated the best moment of my life, but I didn’t. It was real.
Stephie and I need to talk.