The silence between us in the car was sharp enough to cut skin.

Adrian hadn’t said a word since we left the courthouse. His hands gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, his jaw clenched so tight I thought he might break a tooth. I sat beside him, watching the city blur past the window, feeling a strange hollowness in my chest.

It wasn’t just the paternity result. It was everything. The courtroom, Eliora’s sham of a breakdown, the video evidence, the twisted reveal that the ...