“So she is his,” Gerald said, disappointed, already looking for the next objection. “Fine. Is that all?”
“No,” the lawyer said slowly, turning the page, a line appearing between his brows. “There’s… the comparative family panel. The one the family requested.” He read it again, silently, and I watched his face change. “This can’t be formatted correctly.”
“Read it,” Gerald snapped.
The lawyer looked up, and then he looked at Carson, and then he read it.
“Carson Rutherford shows no genetic relationship to the Rutherford family line. He is not biologically related to Reginald Rutherford, nor to any member of the banked family database.” He swallowed. “The markers are conclusive. Carson Rutherford is not, biologically, a Rutherford.”
I have been in quiet rooms before.
I have never heard a silence like the one that fell on that estate.
The whole pride of them — Gerald, the aunts, the cousins, the entire family that had assembled to cast my daughter out of the sacred bl*odline — sat frozen, every face turning slowly from the report to Carson, the golden heir, the keeper of the line, the man who had just been revealed to carry none of the bl*od he had spent his life believing made him better than everyone else.
