Chapter 72
"Dami!"
Juliana rushed forward and scooped the child into her arms.
With trembling fingers, she checked his carotid pulse and lifted his eyelids.
Shock.
A towering rage surged from the depths of Juliana's heart straight to her head, burning so hot that her entire body went cold.
Holding the child, she whipped around to face Ashley, who'd come at the sound. Her normally calm eyes now blazed with terrifying fire.
"He's only a six-year-old child! How could you do this to him?!" Her voice shook with pure fury.
Ashley was momentarily stunned by the outburst, then her face twisted into a cruel sneer.
"What did I do to him? Juliana, what right do you have to question me?" She crossed her arms, looking down at her condescendingly. "You claim to know he's a child? If it weren't for you, you bitch, corrupting him into what he is now, would I need to discipline him?"
Juliana couldn't believe her ears.
"I corrupted him?"
"Didn't you?" Ashley's voice rose sharply, pointing an accusing finger at Juliana's face. "You came back and turned our household upside down! Manipulated the child into rejecting his own mother! Someone like you should never have survived! It's a sin you're alive!"
"Enough!"
A cold command cut through Ashley's tirade.
Lucas stepped forward, shielding Juliana and the child behind him. His tall frame carried overwhelming presence, his deep eyes holding unprecedented disappointment and frost.
He'd always thought his mother simply disliked Juliana's background and was using the child to force his compliance.
He never imagined she could be this vicious toward her own grandson.
Lucas looked at Ashley, his words clear and deliberate.
"My affairs are none of your concern. Just remember this—even if I never end up with Juliana, I will absolutely never marry Bianca."
"You might as well give up on that idea."
To Ashley's ears, this was her son's declaration of complete betrayal—choosing an outsider over his own mother.
Ashley trembled with rage, glaring at Juliana behind Lucas as if her gaze alone could tear the woman apart.
So everything she'd done was for this woman!
"Fine! Just fine, Juliana!" Ashley laughed bitterly through her fury.
Juliana held the cold child in her arms, not sparing Ashley a single glance.
Her entire focus was on Damian's pale little face.
Lucas didn't look at Ashley again. "We're going to the hospital."
With that, he took the child and strode downstairs with long steps. Juliana immediately followed. Neither looked back.
The roar of the engine grew distant, then disappeared completely.
The massive villa fell into deathly silence.
Ashley looked as if all strength had drained from her body, her chest heaving violently.
The disappointment and coldness in her son's eyes—like the sharpest knife plunging precisely into her heart.
He said he'd never marry Bianca, even if he didn't end up with Juliana.
He told her to abandon that hope.
For that woman, for that child of unknown origin, he'd drawn a line between himself and his own mother.
Ashley suddenly laughed, the sound shrill and desolate. Tears streamed down her carefully maintained face. "Good... what a good son I've raised..."
What had she done all this for?
"Mom."
A gentle male voice spoke behind her.
Ashley spun around to see David standing there, concern on his face.
Seeing him, Ashley's taut nerves seemed to snap. She covered her face, suppressed sobs escaping through her fingers.
David approached and offered her a tissue. "Don't be too upset. Lucas is just angry right now."
"Angry?" Ashley swatted his hand away. "He's been bewitched by that bitch! For her sake, he's even disowned his own mother! Everything I've done has been for him, yet he... he..."
She couldn't continue, choking sounds coming from her throat.
David watched her silently. "You know Lucas's temper. What he cares about most are the children. Locking Damian up this time really crossed his line."
"What's wrong with disciplining my own grandson?!" Ashley shrieked. "If he hadn't been manipulated by that woman Juliana into turning against his own family, would I need to do this?"
As she spoke, her mind churned in chaos. Images flashed alternately—Lucas protecting Juliana, Damian's face so similar to her son's, Juliana's eyes blazing with fury.
Suddenly, a scene she'd deliberately forgotten for years surged up from the depths of her memory.
Ashley's crying stopped abruptly. She grabbed David's arm. "David... do you remember... do you remember that DNA report from years ago?"
David winced at her grip. "Report?"
"Yes! That paternity test report!" Ashley reminded him urgently. "The one I had you arrange! Between Damian and Lucas!"
David remembered.
Years ago, shortly after Damian was brought home, Ashley looked at the infant in the bassinet and felt uneasy.
She'd taken Lucas's hair and a swab from the baby's mouth for a paternity test.
The day the results came, Ashley looked at the words "biological relationship excluded" and smashed everything breakable in the room.
"I remember." David nodded. "Yes, that happened."
"Where's that report? Do we still have it?!"
David looked at her nearly crazed expression and gently shook his head. "It's gone. Don't you remember? You were so furious after reading it, said it was an utter humiliation, and told me to dispose of it immediately. I... I personally tore it up and fed it through the shredder."
"Torn up..." The light in Ashley's face instantly dimmed. She muttered to herself in a daze.
Yes, she'd ordered its destruction herself.
At the time, she'd thought Juliana had incredible audacity—using someone else's child to pass off as Sharp family bloodline, deceiving her. She'd wanted to immediately throw the child out and destroy Juliana's reputation.
But Juliana had already "died" from hemorrhaging.
A dead person couldn't threaten her son anymore. And while the child wasn't biologically related, he'd been brought home as "the Sharp family's eldest grandson." She couldn't just throw him out and make the Sharp family the laughingstock of high society.
Moreover, Lucas had still been unconscious then. Doctors said even if he woke, he might never be able to father children again.
Weighing the pros and cons, she'd had no choice but to bury this secret deep in her heart and publicly claim Damian as Lucas's biological son.
So many years had passed, she'd almost forgotten about it.
Until today—Juliana's appearance, Lucas's abnormal behavior—made her remember this explosive secret.
"But... but David, look at him! Look at Damian's face!" Ashley couldn't comprehend it, clutching her own hair in anguish. "He looks exactly like Lucas did as a child! Like they were cast from the same mold! If they're not blood-related, how could they look so alike?"