"No, he is not my son."
Marcus's voice was hollow and broken, and the words hung in the air like a death sentence as he stared at the DNA report.
Aria felt her heart shatter at the devastation in his expression, and she tightened her grip on his shoulder.
"What?" Dmitri said, in disbelief, "That can't be right. The boy is exactly the right age, he called her Mummy, everything pointed to…"
"The DNA doesn't lie," Viktor interrupted quietly, holding up the report. "Twenty genetic markers analyzed, zero matches. Karl is definitely not Marcus's biological son."
"But Catherine was pregnant when she died," Aria said, and confusion mixed with sympathy in her voice. " If Karl isn't Marcus's son, then who is his father?"
"Someone else," Marcus said, and bitterness filled every word. "Catherine was pregnant with another man's child when she supposedly died. Which means our entire marriage was a lie.
