Chapter 73 Unraveling

Chapter 73 Unraveling


Colton’s POV

Everything had gone smoothly.

That’s what I kept telling myself on the drive home, repeating it like a prayer against the hollow feeling sitting in the center of my chest that refused to go away.

Smoothly. Everything went smoothly.

But I kept seeing Jocelyn’s face.

Not the Jocelyn of the last several months—the one I’d been maneuvering against, the obstacle, the threat. The other one. The one from before everything became what it became. The one who used to argue with me over restaurant choices and laugh too loudly at her own jokes.

She had been lying in that hospital bed completely still, and something about it had baffled me in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

I hadn’t expected the guilt.

It sat on my chest like physical weight, and no amount of reasoning shifted it. I told myself this was necessary. I told myself it was almost over. I told myself that once the dust settled, everything would be fine and this would all be distant history.

But the guilt remained, stubborn and inconvenient.

And beneath it, almost shamefully, was something else.

Relief.

The quiet, terrible relief of a man who believes the hardest part is behind him.

Kylie was already at my apartment when I arrived, curled on the sofa with her phone, the television on at low volume. She looked up when I entered, reading my face the way she always did.

“Sit,” she said.

I sat heavily in the armchair and leaned my head back.

“Tell me,” she said, moving to the floor in front of me, reaching for my laces.

I told her everything. The hospital corridor. The assembled family. Richard’s face when the doctor came out. The announcement about the baby. Martha’s disappearance and what followed.

Kylie listened without interrupting, working at my laces with focused hands.

“And Richard still insists on the paternity test,” I finished.

“Of course he does,” she said.

“After everything that happened today. After the hospital, after—” I shook my head. “The man doesn’t break.”

“You have to attend tomorrow,” she said, looking up at me. “Watch Richard as it all falls apart.”

“My uncle doesn’t break, Kylie. You don’t understand him the way I do.”

She looked into my eyes with that particular steadiness that had always unsettled me slightly.

“Do you trust me?”

I held her gaze.

“Yes,” I said, though my voice cracked slightly on the word.

She returned to my laces. “Then let me do what I do. All I need is your presence as backup.”

“What exactly are you planning?”

She smiled without looking up. “Do you think we really lost last night?”

I frowned. “Gina and Daniel didn’t get what they needed. Jocelyn broke the moment before—”

“Jocelyn broke the moment,” she said. “Not the night. They were still in that room with Richard for long enough. What matters is what was gathered before she intervened.” She paused. “Richard was unconscious. The CCTV was wiped. And Jocelyn is currently in a hospital bed.”

Something in my chest shifted.

“We just need to destabilize him further,” I said slowly. “Give the media something to carry.”

“Exactly.” She stood, satisfied, and settled herself on the armrest of my chair. “Tomorrow, everything changes.”

I looked at her.

And for the first time since leaving the hospital, the hollow feeling in my chest eased slightly.

The Next morning.

We arrived at the venue the following morning dressed impeccably.

Kylie wore a structured cream dress that made her look effortlessly composed. I wore my best charcoal suit, the one I saved for board presentations and occasions that required projecting absolute confidence.

The venue was a formal conference hall, neutral ground, arranged by the hospital’s legal team to ensure transparency. Round tables filled with invited family members, key company associates, and legal representatives. 

Cameras lined the back wall and both side entrances, press having been granted limited access by prior arrangement.

The projector screen dominated the front of the room, currently dark and waiting.

Richard was already seated when we arrived.

He wore a dark navy suit, every line of it precise, his expression composed in the particular way of a man who had decided beforehand exactly what this day would look like regardless of what it cost him. He looked like someone who had not slept and had decided that was irrelevant.

Beside him, Lilian sat with a mournful stillness that was difficult to look at directly. Her eyes carried the weight of Jocelyn’s absence, of Martha’s absence, of everything the last twenty-four hours had taken. She held herself upright through what was clearly considerable effort.

My parents found us as we took our seats.

My father leaned in close, his voice low. “Everything is in position.”

My mother’s eyes were bright with an excitement she was barely containing.

I nodded and said nothing.

The doctor mounted the podium at exactly the scheduled time.

He was a precise man—mid-fifties, accustomed to delivering consequential information in rooms full of people who wanted different things from him. He opened with a brief explanation of methodology. Chain of custody. Independent verification. The process documented and available for legal review.

Then he advanced to the result.

The screen behind him illuminated.

“Following the comprehensive DNA analysis conducted under independent oversight,” he said and my pulse raced 

“the paternity of the child carried by Jocelyn Hayden is confirmed. The biological father is Richard Asher.”

The room erupted.

Not with celebration, with the particular noise of a room full of people all processing the same information through completely different emotional filters simultaneously.

Lilian pressed her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook once, twice.

My father’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

I pressed my palms flat against my thighs and kept my expression neutral.

Then the doors at the back of the room burst open.

Gina walked in.

Beside her, Daniel—moving with a confidence that told me immediately this had been arranged, that this entrance was deliberate, that every step of it had been choreographed.

The room turned.

The guards at the entrance moved forward immediately. Richard raised one hand without looking back.

They stopped.

He’d known. He’d known they were coming and he’d told the guards to let them through.

That was when the cold started spreading through my chest.

Gina took the microphone from the podium with the ease of someone who had rehearsed this moment.

She cleared her throat.

“Mr. Richard Asher,” she began, her voice carrying cleanly to every corner of the room, “has erectile dysfunction. He is attracted to neither men nor women.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

Lilian’s hand flew to her chest.

Behind me, I heard my mother exhale with quiet satisfaction.

The screen shifted.

A video appeared—grainy, deliberately obscured in places, showing a bedroom scene. A man lying motionless on a bed while a man and woman moved around him. The faces of the two visitors were blocked. The man presented as Richard was identifiable only by build and the fragments of the room visible around him.

The footage showed exactly what Gina had described.

She let it play for long enough to make its point.

Then she held up a document.

“A medical test result,” she said, “confirming impotence. Clinically verified. So the question the room should be asking is simple—how does an impotent man father a child? And who, exactly, bribed the hospital officials to produce a paternity result that is a documented fabrication?”

The murmuring in the room built rapidly.

My uncle sat with his brows slightly furrowed, his expression less concerned than the situation seemed to warrant.

Which frightened me more than any other response he could have had.

My father stood.

He walked to the front with the authority of a man who had been waiting for this moment for longer than today.

“I will tell you all something I should have said years ago,” he said, his voice carrying. “My brother Richard has struggled with this condition for most of his adult life. It was a family matter. Private. Hidden out of loyalty to him.” He shook his head with practiced sorrow. “But this woman—this outsider—has exploited our silence. Has bribed hospital officials. Has constructed an elaborate deception to claim a child for an inheritance she has no right to. For all we know—”

“Shut the hell up.”

Lauren’s voice cut through the room like a blade.

Every head turned.

She was standing near the side entrance, and the expression on her face was the particular controlled fury of someone who has been waiting for exactly the right moment and has now arrived at it.

“My friend,” she said, walking forward, “is lying in a hospital bed right now because of what this family did to her. She is not here to defend herself. So I will.”

The room was completely silent.

“Do you have counter-evidence?” Lilian’s voice trembled. She was trying to hold herself together and barely managing it.

“I have everything,” Lauren said simply.

She walked to the podium, connected a device, and looked out at the room.

“You want evidence?” she said. “You’ll get it.”

The screen behind her changed.

What appeared on it was unmistakable and completely unambiguous.

Undeniable identities of Richard and Jocelyn, having sex.

Hot, raw sex.

The footage clear, the identities undeniable, the moment documented with a specificity that left no room for interpretation.

And at the critical moment, Richard’s capacity to father a child confirmed beyond any argument Gina or Daniel or my father or anyone else in this room could construct.

My pulse stopped.

I turned to Kylie beside me.

The assuring smile on her lips had gone completely.

And in the front row, my father sat down slowly, as though his legs had simply decided they were done holding him up.