That revelation destroyed Beatrice’s final defense.
“You were at our wedding, Mom,” Alex said, his voice dead and cold. “You met Sergio. You knew she had a brother.”
“I… I wasn’t certain it was him in the dark,” Beatrice stammered.
“You didn’t need to be certain,” Alex spat. “You just needed an excuse to justify what you did.” Beatrice stopped defending herself. For the first time in her life, the powerful matriarch seemed to shrink into her chair and whispered, “I had no right.”
Her confession brought no relief.
A few days later, Beatrice arrived at Alex’s apartment carrying a sealed yellow folder. Inside was a private DNA compatibility report conducted just two months after the quadruplets were born. It wasn’t an official court paternity test, but it confirmed a 99.9% familial match.
Alex went pale. “How did you get this?”
Beatrice clasped her hands tightly. She had secretly gone to the hospital while the babies were still in the NICU. Through her connections with Dr. Vance, she obtained discarded lab samples and arranged a private test—wanting to know for certain whether they were Alex’s children before deciding whether to tell him.
