For a split second, no one moved. No one spoke.
Vivian's fingers slipped from Sebastian's arm without her realizing, her body going still as her mind refused to process what she had just heard.
The words didn't settle. They hovered, wrong, impossible, refusing to fit into anything real.
Sebastian didn't move either. Not even slightly. His face remained calm, but it wasn't control. It was something deeper. Something locked. Like his mind had simply rejected what it could not accept.
Alexander Vale blinked once. Just once.
Then his expression hardened, every trace of earlier composure snapping into something . "That's not possible."
The doctor held his ground, though the pressure in the room had shifted dangerously. "I understand how it sounds," he said carefully, "but the genetic markers align. Every tested locus confirms biological paternity. There is no discrepancy."
"No."
Isabella's voice cut through sharply.
