Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 334

Chapter 334

Chapter 334

The children were more careful this morning.

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Lucia noticed before she had even finished pouring her first coffee. Yesterday’s breakfast had been easy to read. This morning was different. Lucas ate the right way this time, really trying, eyes on his plate instead of sliding toward Ruth. Monica’s face stayed blank in a way that clearly took extra effort. They had talked the night before about being less obvious, and it was working, which told Lucia exactly how worried they were about whatever they were hiding.

Ria sat next to Alexander, who still had his phone in his hand from a call he had just ended in the hallway. He looked the way he had looked for days now, calm on the outside, something else running underneath that took work to hide.

Lucia watched him rub his thumb against his temple once.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Not much.” He set the phone face down. “I’ll be alright.”

Ria pushed the coffee pot toward him without looking up. “You need this.”

He gave her a real smile, the kind that actually landed. “Probably right.”

The moment passed and breakfast went on.

Ruth put her fork down.

The sound was small, but the table caught it, the way people catch small sounds when they’ve been waiting for something to happen.

“I’ve made a decision,” Ruth said.

Everyone turned toward her. She folded her hands on the table, looked around with her usual calm face, and took a slow breath.

“I think it’s time to clear up the doubt. For everyone’s sake.” She paused. “I want a prenatal DNA test.”

The quiet that followed had weight to it. Lucas kept his face still, well practiced by now. Monica stared at the table. Lena’s hand froze around her glass. Ria looked at Alexander.

Lucia looked at Ruth.

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Chapter 334

“We’ll arrange it today,” he said.

Ruth opened her mouth. Nothing came out right away.

“I thought the clinic might need more time,” she finally said.

“Apparently they don’t,” Alexander said.

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Lucas watched her face closely for the next two seconds, the same close watching he’d been doing since he saw the photograph in her room, and he saw something that had never shown on her face before in all the weeks she’d been in this house. Her calm didn’t break completely. It just slipped a little at the edges, quick, like a mask sliding on someone who wasn’t ready for the turn the talk had just taken.

Lucia tilted her head. “You’re the one who suggested the test,” she said, using the steady voice she used when she was paying very close attention. “So why do you look like you weren’t expecting an answer?”

Ruth laughed, almost the right laugh but not quite. “I just didn’t think Alexander would agree so fast.”

“If the child is mine,” Alexander said, “the test proves it and this is over.” His voice stayed even. “And if the child isn’t mine, that truth needs to come out too.”

The way he said it, with no anger in it at all, did exactly what that kind of calm always does to someone bracing for a fight. It gave her nothing to push against.

Ria set her glass down and looked straight at Ruth, the unhurried look of someone who had already made up her mind. “Unless,” she said.

Everyone looked at her.

“Unless you’re worried the result won’t say what you’ve been telling us it will say.”

Ruth shook her head. “Of course the baby is Alexander’s.”

“Then the test can only prove that,” Ria said. “So there’s nothing to worry

about.”

The table went quiet.

Ruth reached for her water, and Lucas, who had been watching her hands since her fork hit the plate, watched her fingers close around the glass. Her knuckles went pale for a second.

Her breathing changed too. One breath in, one out, just a little slower than the one before.

Then it was gone. Color came back into her hand, her breathing evened out, and she looked around the table wearing her normal face again.

But Lucas had seen it.

Less than two seconds, and he had caught it. He had seen calm and careful thinking from her before, and sometimes a flash of something darker underneath when she thought no one was watching. This was different. This was the look of someone whose plan had just hit something it wasn’t ready for.

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Chapter 334

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Alexander picked up his phone and called his assistant. “I need a prenatal paternity test set up. Private clinic. Earliest slot available.” He listened. “Tomorrow morning. Confirm it.”

He ended the call. “Tomorrow morning,” he told Ruth.

She forced a smile. “That’s quite soon.”

“No reason to wait.”

Lucia kept her eyes on Ruth. Something stirred in the back of her mind, the same instinct she had learned to trust over years of reading people, and it was telling her that Ruth’s suggestion wasn’t what it seemed, and that Alexander agreeing so fast had thrown something off balance.

She couldn’t name it yet.

She watched Ruth pick her fork back up.

Lucas shut the bedroom door behind Ria, the last one to arrive.

“She wanted that,” he said.

“She did,” Monica said. “Until Dad said yes.”

“She froze,” Ria said. “She was expecting a fight. Lawyers. Pushback. Instead he just said good.”

“She’s going to try to mess with the test,” Lucas said.

“How?” Lena asked.

“I don’t know yet. But she never suggests anything she hasn’t already planned three steps ahead of.”

Monica glanced toward the desk drawer where the diary was kept. “We watch her. From now until the appointment. Every move she makes.”

All four agreed.

Ruth locked her bedroom door. The pleasant look dropped off her face the moment she was alone, the way it always did, right away.

She started pacing.

She had not planned for this. She had thought the suggestion would make her look cooperative while buying time, expecting lawyers and delays and the slow way these things usually moved. She had expected weeks

Instead she had tomorrow morning.

She grabbed the second phone from its hiding spot and made a call.

Marcus picked up on the second ring.

“Alexander agreed,” she said. “Tomorrow morning.”

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Chapter 334

A pause on the line.

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“Then we move everything up,” he said, calm and sure, the voice of someone who treated surprises as small adjustments and nothing more.

“The samples,” she said.

“Yes. We switch them at the clinic.”

“It has to work. If this comes back wrong, everything falls apart.”

“It will work. It’s already been prepared.”

He hung up.

Ruth put the phone away and stood there working through what the next few hours needed, how each step had to look, how to keep her face steady through tomorrow’s appointment, knowing the whole time that paternity wasn’t really what was being tested at all.

Marcus set his own phone on the desk and made a second call.

It connected after one ring. A woman’s voice, businesslike, quick.

“Handle tomorrow’s file exactly as we discussed,” he said.

“Everything is in order,” she said.

“Our deal still stands.”

“Understood. It will be taken care of on our end.”

“Good.”

He hung up.

On the desk sat a lab confirmation file, a printed appointment record, and next to them a staff ID badge from the private clinic Alexander had just booked. The name on the badge wasn’t Marcus’s.

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