My Second Marriage with the Mafia Kingpin novel Chapter 489

Chapter 489: Do I Even Have The Right?

"Marshal... and you."

The silence that followed was as deafening as the aftermath of a gunshot.

Ashley straightened, her eyes still fixed on Lucian.

"Why?"

"I was curious."

Her lips curved into a frown as she stared at him. "Lucian."

"I need to know something." Lucian clasped her hand tightly and looked deep into her eyes. "That’s why I asked Gustav to run the tests."

"Why? Because a parent can’t be that awful to his own child?" Ashley let out a bitter laugh before looking away.

"Are you upset?" he asked, studying her reaction.

The conflict on her face made it difficult to tell.

Ashley had told Lucian about nearly everything she had gone through. Although there were still small details she hadn’t mentioned, he already knew enough to understand the kind of life she had lived in the Di Carpio family.

"Upset?" She released another short, bitter laugh. "With you? No, I’m not upset. I’m... tired."

She leaned back against the couch, pulling away from him. Her eyes wandered over the blood and bodies surrounding them—a sight that could no longer affect her appetite or unsettle her in any way.

"Lucian," she called quietly. "Do you think I’ve never taken a paternity test before?"

Ashley raised her brows and tilted her head back to look at him.

"I’ve taken about a hundred of them," she said.

"And?" he asked. "What were the results?"

Considering Ashley had remained with the Di Carpios until they married her off, the obvious assumption was that every result had been positive.

Even so, Lucian immediately considered the possibility that someone had tampered with them. Anyone who knew Marshal might have been capable of altering the results.

Lucian hadn’t seen any of them, but his heart had already reached its own conclusion.

Ashley could be someone else’s daughter.

No one could tamper with this one under his orders. However, Ashley’s answer was the last thing he expected.

"I don’t know." She shrugged and looked away, lowering her eyes. "I took a hundred tests at a hundred different clinics, and I received a hundred results. It’s just that... I never opened any of them."

His brows furrowed as he stared at the side of her face. "You never looked at the results?"

"Nope," she chuckled faintly. "Weird, right? Maybe even stupid."

Lucian swallowed as he observed her. "No, it isn’t."

"It is stupid," she argued, although her voice had grown lighter. "I would’ve known whether I was actually his daughter if I had simply torn open those envelopes as easily as I pull a trigger. Maybe I would’ve stopped wondering why he tormented me the way he did—as if the only reason he allowed me to live was so he could keep hurting me."

She paused as the weight of her own words pressed against her chest.

"But every time the results arrived, I couldn’t bring myself to open them," she continued softly. "Because no matter what they said, another kind of hell was waiting for me."

Ashley drew a deep breath.

"If the result was positive—if I really was his daughter—then why?" Her voice trembled despite the bitter smile on her face. "Why would he hurt me like that? Was it because he felt cheated by a prostitute who claimed she was going to give him a son?"

She shrugged.

"Was that all it was? If he hated me so much, why didn’t he just kill me so his wife wouldn’t be angry anymore? Killing an infant isn’t something that would’ve cost him any sleep."

Ashley tilted her head back and rested it against the couch. Her eyes fell shut.

"And if I wasn’t his child, then..." She trailed off. "Who am I? Who were my parents? Did he kill them?"

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