Chapter 29: The Stage She Built

The knock came again, sharper this time. The kind that demanded an answer.

Gabriel’s head turned toward the door, his brow furrowed. My stomach dropped, the air sucked out of the room.

No. Not now. Not when I finally had him looking at the truth.

The knock became a fist pounding. Then, a voice. Too sweet. Too smooth.

“Gabriel? It’s me. We need to talk.”

Emily.

My chest constricted. The sound of her voice slithered under the door like smoke, filling the apartment.

Gabriel’s hand twitched at his side, hesitation flickering across his face.

I stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “Don’t open it.” My voice was low and urgent. “She knows exactly what she’s doing. You saw the proof. Don’t let her back in.”

His jaw clenched. His eyes flicked to the folder on the desk, then back to me. “Eve—”

Another knock, harder, rattling the doorframe. Emily’s voice rose, threaded with false urgency. “Gabriel, please. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. You deserve the truth. I can explain everything.”

I almost laughed. Bitter. Hollow. Explain? Emily had built her whole empire on lies.

“Do you hear her?” I hissed. “She’s baiting you. If you open that door, she wins.”

For a moment, his gaze held mine, stormy, unreadable. Then, slow as a man walking into fire, he moved past me.

“Gabriel—” I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off gently, not cruelly, just determined.

“I need to hear her,” he said, voice low. “If she’s lying, I’ll know. I have to know.”

The words punched the breath from my lungs. He didn’t trust the proof. Not fully. Not yet.

The lock clicked. The door creaked open.

And there she was.

Emily stood in the hallway, radiant in calculated disarray. Her hair was loose, her blouse slightly wrinkled, and her eyes shimmering as though tears had only just dried. In her hand, a folded piece of paper.

Her gaze slid past Gabriel and landed on me. The corner of her mouth curved, small and satisfied.

“Perfect,” she said softly. “You’re both here.”

Emily stepped inside as if she owned the place. Her perfume trailed after her, cloying, invasive, filling every inch of the room. Gabriel shut the door slowly, his face unreadable, while my pulse pounded hot and furious.

Emily held the folded paper delicately, like it was holy scripture. She glanced between us, her lashes low, her voice trembling in that fragile-little-bird way she’d perfected.

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” she said softly. “But you left me no choice.”

My teeth ground together. “Cut the act.”

Emily’s eyes flicked to me, sharp as glass, before softening again when they returned to Gabriel. “You deserve to know the truth. You always did.”

She handed him the paper. Slowly. Reverently.

Gabriel unfolded it, his brow furrowing. I stepped closer, my stomach in knots.

The words at the top blurred in my vision, but the bold header was unmistakable: Prenatal Paternity Testing: Preliminary Results.

My chest seized.

Emily’s voice was barely above a whisper. “I had it done early, even though it was risky. I had to know. And now you do too.”

Gabriel’s eyes scanned the page, his face tightening.

I snatched it out of his hands, fury blazing. “This is fake. Just like the rest of it.”

Emily gasped, wounded. “Fake? You think I’d risk my child’s life to forge—”

“Your imaginary child,” I snapped. She thrust the paper back at Gabriel. “Look at the signature. Look at the date. The same clinic, the same formatting errors. Sebastian traced everything back. This isn’t a coincidence—it’s another forgery.”

Emily’s lips curled, no longer hiding the venom. “Of course you’d say that. You’re terrified. And you should be.”

She stepped closer, lowering her voice just enough that it dripped into my ear like poison. “Gabriel doesn’t need to remember who you were. He needs proof of who you are now. Desperate. Shrieking. Afraid.”

My hands shook, but not from fear. From fury. “If you think this will hold up—”

Emily cut her off, louder now, directing it all at Gabriel. “She can’t stand that you chose me. She never could. And now that there’s a baby—our baby—she wants to erase us.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened, his gaze flicking between them, stormy, torn. The paper shook slightly in his hand.

“Enough,” he said finally, his voice rough. “Both of you.”

The silence after was worse than shouting.

Emily’s eyes glittered. She had planted the seed, and she knew it. She smoothed her blouse, serene, victorious.

“I’ll let you think about it,” she said, stepping toward the door. But as she passed me, she leaned close, her breath warm, her whisper like a knife:

“Round three.”

The door shut behind her, leaving the echo of her heels in the hallway and the suffocating weight of silence inside.

I turned to Gabriel, my chest heaving. “You can’t tell me you believe her.”

But the way his hand lingered on the paper—the hesitation in his eyes—told me everything.

Gabriel stared at the paper long after Emily’s perfume had faded from the room. His hands gripped it so tightly the edges cut into his palms, but still he couldn’t let it go.

I stood across from him, my chest rising and falling, my eyes burning with fury. I looked at him like he’d already betrayed me, like just holding the page was treason.

Maybe it was.

But the words—those sterile, clinical lines stamped across the top—wouldn’t leave his head. Prenatal Paternity Testing: Preliminary Results.

Black ink. His name. A probability percentage that hits like a blade.

“Gabriel,” I said, my voice raw, breaking through the fog. “You saw Sebastian’s proof. The signatures, the dates—everything about this screams forgery. She’s lying. Again.”

He dragged a hand down his face, trying to think, to breathe. But his memory was a fractured mirror, shards reflecting pieces of a man he no longer recognised.

Emily’s trembling voice echoed: ‘I’m scared’. I didn’t know who else to call.

My desperate plea pressed against it: she’s manipulating you. Don’t you see?

Both women pulling, both voices demanding belief.

And him? He felt like a hollow man, too easily swayed, too easily broken.

I stepped closer, my hand trembling as it brushed his arm. “Look at me, Gabriel. Do you believe her? Do you really believe her over me?”

His throat worked. The answer clawed at him, but it wouldn’t form. Because the truth was worse than choosing. The truth was he didn’t know.

And not knowing could destroy them both.