Page 142 of What Comes Around

The DNA testing service. Results ready.

Finally.

This was it. The moment everything shifted back in my favor.

The moment Knox would have no choice but to face me.

Chapter 44: It’s Always Ashley

Apple POV

My fingers trembled as I opened the email, the document loading just a second too slowly, long enough for something uneasy to settle in my chest. My eyes skipped straight to the conclusion.

Probability of paternity: 0%.

For a moment, my brain refused to process it. I blinked and read it again. Zero percent.

No.

I leaned closer to the screen like that would change anything, like proximity could force the words into something else, something that made sense.

Probability of paternity: 0%.

My heart started pounding, hard enough to hurt. I scrolled up, checking the names, Knox Sinclair. Apple Richards. Test result: excluded as biological father.

“No,” I whispered, the word barely forming before I read it again, slower this time, forcing each line into my mind, waiting for it to shift, to correct itself, to become what it was supposed to be.

Nothing changed.

“He is the father,” I said under my breath, like saying it out loud would make it true. He had to be.

My hands started shaking. “No,” I said again, louder now. “No, that’s wrong.”

I stared at the screen, waiting, just waiting for the universe to fix itself, for the truth I already knew to appear.

But it didn’t.

My chest heaved, pulse roaring in my ears, panic clawing its way up my throat.

This couldn’t be happening.

It wasn’t possible.

I had done everything right.

A scream tore out of me as I hurled my phone across the room. It slammed into the wall and dropped to the floor, but it wasn’t enough. I grabbed whatever was closest, a candle, a glass, a throw pillow, and threw those too, watching them crash, shatter, scatter across the space.

“No. No. NO!”

My breath came in sharp, ragged bursts, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape. I snatched up my phone again and dialed the number I’d sworn I’d never use.

She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“What the hell happened?” I screamed. “You told me it was Knox’s room. You told me he was the one who stayed there that night!”

There was a pause, then nervous breathing. “Miss Apple, I—I cleaned the room you said—”

“You’re housekeeping,” I snapped. “You had ONE job. One. You said it was Knox Sinclair’s suite. The one he used. You said he was the one who checked in with that stupid actress.”