[Sophie’s POV]

The words on the screen blur, then sharpen, then blur again as my eyes struggle to focus through the tears I didn’t realize were forming.

The phone trembles in my hands, the text swimming before me like something viewed through water. My heart hammers against my ribs, each beat a thunderclap that seems to shake my entire body. The clinical language of the email—sterile, precise, utterly indifferent to the lives it’s about to reshape—stares back at me, demanding to be understood. I read it once, twice, three times, my brain refusing to process what my eyes are seeing.

“Sophie?” Adrian’s voice is tight with anxiety, stretched thin as a wire about to snap. “What does it say?”

I can feel both of them leaning toward me, their combined attention a physical pressure against my skin. The afternoon light seems brighter suddenly, the colors of the room more vivid, as if reality itself has sharpened to accommodate the magnitude of this moment. I read the relevant section again, making sure I understand. The language is clinical, statistical, designed to be legally defensible rather than emotionally navigable. Probability percentages and genetic markers and scientific terminology that reduces the miracle of our daughter to data points.

But the conclusion is clear.

“It’s Adrian,” I say, my voice cracking on his name. The syllables come out broken, fractured by emotion I can’t contain. “She’s Adrian’s. Biologically.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

The words hang in the air between us, suspended like dust motes in sunlight. I can hear the tick of the clock on the wall, the distant sound of traffic from the street below, the soft rhythm of Maggie’s breathing through the baby monitor. Time seems to stretch, each second expanding to contain an infinity of feeling.

Then Adrian makes a sound—something between a sob and a laugh—and his face crumples. The composure he’s been maintaining for days, for weeks, for months, simply dissolves. Tears stream down his cheeks in silver tracks, his whole body shaking with the release of tension he’s been carrying since Lisette first planted her poison. The sound he makes is raw, primal, the cry of a man finally allowed to set down an unbearable weight.

“Oh God,” he manages, the words barely intelligible through his tears. “Oh God, she’s mine. She’s really mine.”

I watch him shatter and reform in the same breath, breaking open to release something that’s been trapped inside him—fear and hope and desperate longing all tangled together, finally given permission to exist. His hands cover his face, shoulders heaving, and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than his complete surrender to relief.

Cassian sits very still beside me. The contrast to Adrian’s emotional explosion is stark, almost jarring. I turn to look at him, terrified of what I might see—hurt, disappointment, the fracturing of something we’ve worked so hard to build. My heart clenches with protective anxiety, bracing for a blow I’m not sure any of us could survive.

But his expression isn’t wounded. It’s… peaceful. Relieved, even. His features have softened in a way I’ve rarely seen, the analytical sharpness giving way to something gentler, more vulnerable.

“Cassian?” I reach for his hand, needing the contact, needing to bridge whatever distance this news might have created. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” His voice is steady, genuine, carrying none of the strain I feared I’d hear. “I’m more than okay.”

“But she’s not—”

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