Chapter 3 - Blood and Ledger
The dining room plunged into an icy stillness. Lily stepped out from Julian's shadow, her brow furrowed in confusion, sensing the shift in air. "Daddy?" she piped up softly.
Claire realized what she had let slip. Her throat bobbed, and she smoothed her silk dress in a desperate bid for composure. "It's nothing, darling. Grown-up affairs. Julian, we should discuss this in private, away from your mother and the girl."
"You will speak here," Julian commanded, the authority in his tone rattling the crystal goblets on the table. "You will not call my daughter 'the girl.' And you will explain what you meant by that clause."
Eleanor set her porcelain cup down with deliberate calm. "She found the ledger in my study three nights ago, Julian. That is why she threatened me. She told me if I did not sign the affidavit declaring myself mentally incompetent, she would tear this family apart with the truth."
"Mother, what truth?" Julian demanded, looking between the elderly woman he had sheltered for years and the woman he had promised to marry at the altar in three weeks.
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Claire straightened her posture, tossing her golden hair over her shoulders, her defensiveness turning into venomous triumph. "Your precious late wife, Julian. Victoria wasn't the saint you worship in that graveyard. Look at Lily's birth certificate filed in Saint Jude’s registry, not the sanitized copy your mother keeps locked in the safe."
Claire lunged toward her designer clutch on the credenza, extracting a folded sheet of legal paper. "Look at the biological father's blood type, Julian. It isn't yours."
