Chapter 3: What the Doctor Knew
The hallway felt smaller than it ever had before.
Marcus picked up the phone and slid it back into his jacket pocket.
He didn't look at Victoria when he did it.
He looked at Elena.
Marcus: Take Leo to the nursery.
Lock the door from the inside.
Don't open it until I come to you personally.
Elena: Mr.
Vance, I —
Marcus: Please, Elena.
The word "please" landed differently than any order he had ever given her.
She nodded once, pressed Leo tighter against her chest, and walked quickly down the hall.
She didn't look back.
But she heard everything.
The nursery door clicked shut.
The lock turned.
Victoria: You had no right to show her that message.
Marcus: You had no right to do what I just watched you do.
Victoria: I want to know who sent that to you.
Someone is trying to destroy this family, Marcus.
Someone who hates me —
Marcus: I sent it to myself.
Victoria went very still.
Marcus: From your phone.
This morning.
While you were in the shower.
He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall where Elena had been standing minutes before.
The same wall.
The same spot.
He looked at it for a moment, then back at his wife.
Marcus: Dr.
Harmon has been your physician for eleven years.
He delivered Leo.
He was in this house the night Leo was born.
I always thought that was strange — a private physician making a house call for a routine delivery.
I thought you just preferred the comfort of home.
Victoria: That's exactly what it was.
Marcus: Then why did I find his personal number saved in your phone under the name "R"?
Victoria's jaw tightened.
Just barely.
But Marcus had been watching her face for a decade.
Marcus: I called him this morning.
Before I came upstairs.
He didn't answer.
But his receptionist did.
She told me he had already called in a cancellation for all his appointments today.
Said he had a family emergency.
She sounded nervous when she said it.
Victoria: That has nothing to do with —
Marcus: I have Leo's birth certificate in my office.
His blood type is listed.
O negative.
You are A positive.
I am AB positive.
I looked it up, Victoria.
Two parents cannot produce an O negative child from those combinations.
It is not possible.
The crystal fixtures above them hummed faintly in the silence.
Victoria: You're not a doctor.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Marcus: I called three people this morning.
Dr.
Harmon, who ran.
His receptionist, who was nervous.
And a geneticist at Harmon's own clinic, who confirmed the blood type incompatibility in under four minutes.
Victoria's hand came up slowly and touched her collarbone.
A gesture Marcus had seen her make exactly once before — the night her father's will was read and she learned she had been left less than her brother.
Marcus: I need you to tell me who Leo's father is.
Victoria: How dare you —
Marcus: I need you to tell me right now, Victoria.
Because if you don't, I am going to call my attorney, and the first thing I am going to ask him is whether a man who is not the biological father of a child has any legal obligation to that child — or to the woman who deceived him.
The word "deceived" hit the air between them like something physical.
Victoria's composure cracked — not all at once, but in the way expensive things break: a single line running from edge to center, everything still holding its shape, but nothing strong anymore.
Victoria: You wouldn't take him from me.
Marcus: Tell me who his father is.
She said nothing.
Her eyes moved to the nursery door at the end of the hall.
Behind it, faintly, Leo had stopped crying.
Elena must have been singing to him.
She did that sometimes.
A low, soft sound that carried even through closed doors.
Marcus: I'll ask you one more time.
Victoria's chin lifted.
Her old armor, still trying to hold.
Victoria: His name is Richard Harmon.
And before you say another word — he doesn't know.
He never knew.
I made sure of that.
Marcus looked at her for a long moment.
Then he pushed off the wall and walked toward his office without another word.
Victoria stood alone in the hallway.
The crystal fixtures hummed above her.
Down the corridor, Elena's voice rose and fell in a quiet melody, keeping a small boy calm in a room with a locked door.
Victoria had not been the one to put that lock there.
But she understood, standing in the silence, that she had been the one to make it necessary.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She pulled it out.
A message from a number she didn't recognize.
*He knows.
May you like
Don't say anything else.
I'm coming.*
