Chapter 207: Chapter two hundred and seven

Sebastian's POV

The blue and red lights cut through the damp haze of the depot in rhythmic, agonizing pulses. They washed over the cold concrete floor, painting the pool of blood beneath my hands in sickening shades of purple and crimson.

I was sitting on the metal bumper of an open ambulance, my knees locked, my hands resting lifelessly on my thighs. The blood on my palms had dried into a stiff, dark crust, flaking slightly around my knuckles whenever my fingers twitched. I couldn't move. I couldn't feel the chill of the river wind sweeping through the open warehouse doors. I was hollowed out, floating somewhere far above my own body, watching the scene unfold like a silent, horrifying film.

Avery stood a few feet away near the edge of the police tape, her hands pressed tightly over her mouth, her body shaking as tears streamed silently down her face.

Near the center of the warehouse floor, two paramedics carefully lifted the stretcher. I caught a brief, searing glimpse of Wes’s pale, bloodless face before they pulled a heavy white sheet up over his head, zipping the black body bag shut.

The sound of that zipper sliding closed echoed like thunder inside my skull.

A high, jagged sob tore through my throat, and I buried my face in my hands, pressing my blood-stained palms against my eyes to block out the image. Avery took a single step closer, resting a solemn, trembling hand briefly on my shoulder—a silent gesture of solidarity for the tragedy that had just shattered all of our lives—before stepping back to give me space to bleed.

Heavy footsteps approached, grinding against the loose gravel and broken glass. I didn't look up until a shadow blocked out the flashing strobes.

Detective Miller stood before us. His tactical vest was unbuttoned, his face worn with a profound, exhausted grimace. In his gloved hands, he held a clear evidence bag containing a thick, sealed Manila envelope.

“Mr Sebastian,” Miller said quietly, his voice low and solemn. “Our team just finished clearing Wes’s personal safe up at the mountain estate. We found this tucked behind the ledger. Given what he said before the team opened fire… I thought you needed to see it before it gets processed into the official case file.”

I slowly reached out, my trembling hand hovering over the plastic bag before taking it. Inside the envelope was a folded set of documents stamped with a certified lab seal.

I slid the paper out, my eyes scanning the technical jargon until they locked onto the final line at the bottom of the page:

PROBABILITY OF PATERNITY: 0.00%

CONCLUSION: EXCLUSION OF PATERNAL RELATIONSHIP.

The paper shook violently in my hands. It was dated twenty-five years ago. A certified, original lab report. He had known. Wes had found it, carried it like a toxic ember in his chest, and let it burn him alive until there was nothing left but ash.

A cold, lethal stillness settled over the shock in my chest. The tears stopped. The tremor in my hands died down into a rigid, terrifying calm.

Victoria.

She had been taken into custody a day ago at her city residence—arrested for her role as an accomplice in the kidnapping and conspiracy to conceal a felony.

She was sitting in a holding cell right now, completely unaware that the son she had used as a pawn was lying beneath a white sheet in the back of a coroner's van.

I stood up from the bumper.

“Sebastian,” Avery said softly, her eyes widening with deep concern as she saw the sudden, rigid shift in my posture. “Where are you going? You’re in no state—”

“I need to face her,” I said. My voice didn't sound like my own. It was flat, hard, and completely devoid of life. “She needs to look at what she’s done.”

The interrogation room at the precinct smelled of stale coffee, industrial floor wax, and damp steel.

Victoria sat at the metal table, dressed in a muted silk blouse that looked absurdly out of place against the harsh, fluorescent lighting. Her wrists were bare, her posture rigid, her hands folded neatly over her knee. Even in a holding cell, she was trying desperately to maintain the fragile mask of high-society composure.

When the heavy door clicked open, she turned, a sharp, indignant protest forming on her lips. “It’s about time someone—"

She cut herself off.

The color drained instantly from her face as I stepped into the light. I hadn't washed my hands. The dried blood of our son was still caked beneath my fingernails and smeared across the cuffs of my white shirt. In my right hand, I held the sealed evidence bag containing the DNA report.

“Sebastian…” she breathed, her eyes widening in horror as she looked at my hands. “What… what is that on you? What happened?”

I didn't answer her. I walked slowly to the table and pulled out the chair across from her. The metal scraped agonizingly against the floor. I sat down, leaning forward, placing the clear evidence bag directly in the center of the cold table between us.

“Wes is dead,” I said.

The words hit the small room like a detonation.

Victoria froze. Her mouth stayed slightly open, her eyes darting frantically from my face to the blood on my sleeves, searching for a sign that I was playing a cruel trick on her.

“What?” she whispered, a high, strangled sound. “No. No, he’s… he’s in hiding. He was getting away—”

“He’s dead, Victoria,” I repeated, my voice dropping an octave, deadly and flat. “He pulled a gun on SWAT at the East Dock depot. They shot him. He died in my arms less than an hour ago.”

A ragged scream tore out of her throat, her hands flying to her mouth as she reeled back in her chair. “No! Oh God, no! Wes! My baby—no!”

She collapsed over the metal table, weeping hysterically, her immaculate posture shattering into ragged, convulsive sobs.

I sat completely still, watching her grief with a cold, hollow detachment that terrified me. I didn't reach out. I didn't offer comfort. I just let her break against the steel table until her screams faded into a desperate, gasping hyperventilation.

“You did this to him,” I said softly.

Her head snapped up, her eyes bloodshot, mascara bleeding down her cheeks in dark streaks. “How can you say that? I loved him! I did everything to protect him!”

“You lied to him his entire life,” I hissed, pointing a blood-stained finger down at the plastic bag on the table. “And you lied to me.”

Victoria’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes locked onto the folded lab report visible through the clear plastic. The color didn't just leave her face this time—it looked as though her very soul retreated from her skin.

“You’re going to tell me the truth,” I said, resting my forearms on the table, leaning closer until she could see the absolute ruin in my eyes. “No more games. No more corporate cover-ups. Why did you lie about Wes’s parentage from the very beginning?”

She shook her head frantically, pulling her hands into her lap as if trying to shrink away from the paper. “Sebastian, please… you don't understand—”

“EXPLAIN IT TO ME!” I roared, slamming my flat hand down on the metal table. The crack echoed like a gunshot in the tiny room, making her jump in her seat.

“Look at my hands, Victoria! Look at his blood! He died screaming that he wasn't my son! Tell me why!”

Victoria sobbed, her shoulders collapsing as the last defenses of her life crumbled into dust. She pressed her tear-stained face into her trembling palms, nodding slowly in defeat.

“We were in college,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights. “It was early on… back when you were so focused on proving yourself to your family, so consumed by building the foundation of the empire.”

She swallowed hard, her chest heaving as she forced the confession past her lips.

“You were distant, and I… I made a mistake,” she sobbed, looking up at me with raw, pathetic desperation. “It was one night. One stupid, meaningless mistake with someone I didn't even care about. And then I found out I was pregnant.”

I stared at her, my jaw clenched so tight the muscles ached.

“I knew how much you loved me back then,” she continued, tears spilling over her chin. “I knew how gentle you were, how much you wanted a family with me. But I also knew the Lancaster family. I knew your father, your mother, the strict expectations. If I admitted the baby wasn't yours, I would have been cast aside. My reputation would have been destroyed. I would have lost my standing, my wealth… I would have lost my access to the Lancaster fortune.”

A bitter, terrible smile touched her lips—a mask of pure self-loathing.

“So I stayed quiet,” she confessed, her voice cracking. “I passed Wes off as your son. I gave you the heir you wanted, and in return, I secured my future. I built an unbreakable tie to you and your empire that no one could ever sever.”

“You used a child as a financial contract,” I whispered, disgust thick in my throat.

“It became my living nightmare!” Victoria shrieked softly, wrapping her arms tightly around her waist as if holding her broken pieces together. “Do you have any idea what it was like? Carrying that secret for almost thirty years? Watching him grow up, watching him look at you with those big, desperate eyes, trying so hard to measure up to a father whose blood wasn't even in his veins?”

She wept bitterly, the confession pouring out of her like poison from an open wound.

“The older he got, the more terrified I became. I watched him twist himself into knots trying to be like you—trying to earn your approval, trying to be the perfect Lancaster. And when he found that paper… when he discovered the truth in my safe… it destroyed him, Sebastian! It fed that psychotic obsession in his head. He felt like a ghost in his own life! He spent his final months trying to prove he was better than you, all because he knew he was never really yours!”

Silence fell over the room like a heavy, suffocating shroud.

Victoria dropped her head onto the cold table, her body shaking with helpless, rhythmic sob, entirely undone by the weight of the lie that had finally consumed her son.

I looked down at the evidence bag.

My mind retraced every step of Wes’s life. The first time he threw a baseball and missed, looking at me with panic in his eyes. The late nights he stayed up studying, begging for a nod of approval. The way he walked, the way he laughed, the way he cried out for me in that dark warehouse right before the world tore him apart.

I slowly picked up the paper. Tears, hot and heavy, finally broke free from my eyes, tracking warm paths through the dried blood and dust on my cheeks.

I looked up at Victoria.

She looked back at me through her tears, broken, pitiful, waiting for me to denounce the boy who had just died in the dirt.

“You’re wrong,” I said.

My voice wasn't filled with rage anymore. It was filled with a quiet, profound grace that transcended every lie she had ever built.

Victoria blinked, stunned by the quiet certainty in my tone.

Tears streamed down my face, dropping onto the glass table between us, but my gaze remained locked on hers, unwavering and absolute.

“Blood didn’t make him my son,” I told her, my voice ringing with an undeniable, tragic truth. “Years of raising him did.”

I stood up, leaving the paper on the table, turning my back on her cries as I walked out of the room into the cold, forgiving dark.