I looked at the room full of people who had gathered to decide whether my daughter was pure enough for their name.
“Keep your bl*odline,” I said. “Keep your name. Iris doesn’t need it, and neither do I.”
Then I turned, with my daughter, and I walked out of the Rutherford estate for the last time — the only person who had come in that day with nothing to prove, and the only one who left with everything that mattered.
PART 5 — FINAL
The divorce went through quickly. There’s very little to argue about when a man abandons his wife and newborn over a paternity test the baby passes and he fails.
Carson did not fight for custody. I think he genuinely didn’t know how to be a father to a child he’d started by questioning. He sees Iris on supervised visits, when I allow them, and I do allow them, because she is his daughter — that part was always true — and someday she’ll want to understand where she came from, and I won’t be the one who taught her that bl*od is a weapon. His family taught him that. I will teach her the opposite.
