Chapter 7 - The Counterfeit Verdict
The silence that descended upon Room 412 was heavier than a bank vault door swinging shut.
Julianna’s practiced smirk faltered for the first time. The glossy berry color on her lips seemed suddenly garish against the sudden, defensive stiffness that took over her posture. She shifted her weight from one stiletto heel to the other, her fingers tightening around the leather strap of her Birkin bag until the knuckles turned white.
"What are you looking at me for, Doctor?" Julianna asked, her voice cracking slightly, attempting to maintain that brittle, aristocratic sneer. "If you’re done intruding on our family discussion, hand that file back to Daniel so we can finish this."
Daniel scowled, reaching his hand out toward the paper. "Give me the report, Harrison. It’s a certified genetic profile. My lawyers verified the chain of custody."
Dr. Harrison did not hand the paper back.
Instead, he held the document by its upper corner between two fingers, letting it dangle in the air as if it were a dead, rotting rodent pulled from a sewer. He looked at Daniel with an expression of profound, searing pity—the look an experienced adult gives to a fool who has just gleefully swallowed a mouthful of poison.
"This DNA report," Dr. Harrison said, his voice ringing through the quiet room with the terrifying clarity of a church bell tolling for a funeral, "is an absolute, fabricated fake."
Rachel let out a sharp, ragged gasp from the pillows, her hand flying to her mouth.
Daniel froze mid-reach, his arm suspended in the empty air between them. A look of grotesque, uncomprehending bewilderment rippled across his features. "What? That’s impossible. That came from a state-accredited facility in Naperville—"
"No… you can’t say another word!"
The shriek tore from Julianna’s throat with the violent, frantic desperation of a cornered animal. The refined, elegant socialite vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a pale, trembling woman whose eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated panic. She lunged forward, her manicured fingers clawing through the air, attempting to snatch the paper straight out of Dr. Harrison’s hand.
Dr. Harrison took half a step backward, smoothly evading her reach, his tall frame blocking her completely.
"Shut your mouth and step back from my patient, Miss Vance," Dr. Harrison commanded, his voice exploding with an authority so thunderous that the two nurses in the hallway immediately stepped inside the doorway.
"Julianna?" Daniel stammered, looking at his mistress in utter confusion, his mind struggling to process the sudden, violent hysteria in a woman who was always so composed. "What are you doing? Let the doctor speak—"
"He doesn't know what he's talking about, Dan!" Julianna screamed, her voice shrill, breathless, sweat suddenly breaking out along her hairline and ruining her pristine foundation. "He’s her doctor! He’s covering for her! Don't listen to him, Daniel! Make her sign the papers right now or everything we planned is ruined!"
"Everything you planned?" Rachel whispered from the bed, the horror beginning to shift into something sharper, something electric and alive.
Dr. Harrison laid the forged document flat on the bedside table and tapped the paper with his index finger.
"Mr. Moretti," Dr. Harrison said, looking Daniel dead in the eye, "let me explain to you why this document is a piece of criminal garbage. First, the laboratory listed on this header—Advanced Genetic Diagnostics—had its state medical operating license revoked by the Illinois Department of Public Health fourteen months ago for running fraudulent paternity scams."
Daniel’s jaw slackened, the color slowly beginning to drain from his face. "What...?"
"Second," Dr. Harrison continued, his voice relentless, clinical, and devastating, "this report claims to be a cell-free fetal DNA extraction performed from maternal blood drawn on October twelfth. But Rachel was admitted to my high-risk unit on October tenth with severe preeclampsia. Every drop of blood drawn from this woman over the last three weeks was drawn by my team, logged into Northwestern’s internal pathology system, and analyzed exclusively in our basement lab. No outside courier ever touched her blood."
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Dr. Harrison stepped closer to Daniel, pointing a finger directly at the triplets in their cribs.
"And third, you absolute fool," the doctor said, his words landing like physical blows, "these infants are monozygotic and fraternal triplets conceived through an intrauterine transfer performed in this very building. I was the physician who implanted the fertilized embryos. I held the genetic donor profile in my own hands. Those babies were conceived using your own cryopreserved genetic material from three years ago. There is no other father on the face of the earth. Those children are biologically, unequivocally, one hundred percent yours."
