Then she read the first page.
Her hands began shaking.
The second page made her heart stop.
By the time she reached the fourth result, she was crying.
Not because the children weren’t hers.
They were.
All four were biologically hers.
But something was terribly wrong.
She had expected to discover that one or more of the children weren’t her husband’s.
Instead, the tests revealed something far more complicated.
The four children did not share the same biological father.
She couldn’t breathe.
For years, she had believed all four children belonged to the same family.
But genetically, there were two different paternal lines.
Two children were biologically connected to her husband.
The other two were not.
Yet all four children were unquestionably hers.
She immediately returned to the penthouse with the documents.
That was the moment captured in the room.
She sat on the sofa clutching the DNA report, tears streaming down her face.
The family tree printed across the pages seemed almost impossible.
The secretary watched silently.
The older woman stood behind the sofa holding the jewelry box.
And her husband stared at the results as if they had just destroyed everything he believed about his life.
Finally, he spoke.
“Where did you get those?”
She looked at him.
“From the children.”
His face went white.
His mother closed her eyes.
The secretary lowered her gaze.
That reaction told the young wife something.
They already knew.
Or at least, they knew part of the truth.
“You knew,” she whispered.
Nobody answered.
Her husband slowly walked toward the sofa.
“Give me the papers.”
She handed them over.
He read the first result.
Then the second.
His breathing became heavier.
When he reached the third and fourth pages, his hands began to tremble.
He looked at his mother.
“What did you do?”
The older woman finally spoke.
“I did what I had to do to protect this family.”
