My fingers shook so violently that the phone nearly slipped from my grasp, clattering onto the sterile hospital linoleum. The nurse was still hovering over me, pointing a plastic pen toward a clipboard labeled Acknowledgement of Paternity.
“Mr. Mendez? We just need your signature so we can process the birth certificate,” she said, her voice dripping with artificial professional warmth.yas

I looked at the paper. Then I looked at the baby. The little boy had stopped crying, his tiny fists balled against his chest. But beneath his left eyelid, that faint, jagged brown patch of skin seemed to burn like a brand. David’s mark. David’s chin. David’s blood.
“I… I need a moment,” I choked out, thrusting the blue-blanketed bundle back into the nurse’s startled arms.

I didn’t look at Valerie. I couldn’t. She remained perfectly still in the hospital bed, her face turned toward the window, watching the neon lights of the city blur through the rain. Her silence wasn’t the silence of exhaustion; it was the heavy, suffocating silence of a criminal who had finally been caught but felt no remorse.

I stumbled out of the maternity ward, my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The hospital corridor felt miles long, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like a swarm of angry hornets. I tore open my phone again, staring at the photo Lucy had sent. Two solid, unmistakable pink lines.
Eight years. Eight years of fertility clinics, painful hormone injections for Lucy, humiliating waiting rooms, and unspoken resentment. I had let myself believe she was broken. I had called her defective. But the test in the photo was undeniable. Lucy wasn’t barren.