Chapter 7 - The DNA Test and the Desperate Deal
Three days after Christmas, I was back in my corner office in Austin. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows framed the warm Texas sunset, a dramatic contrast to the snowdrifts of Colorado. My desk was piled with year-end quarterly reports, but right in the center sat a certified priority envelope that had just been hand-delivered by a private courier.
Inside was a legal petition filed by Marcus’s personal attorney in Denver, along with a lab-certified buccal swab kit and a frantic, handwritten letter on company stationery.
I pulled out the letter and read:
Hannah,
I haven't slept in seventy-two hours. Camilla’s father pulled his backing on Monday morning. The banks are calling in my short-term credit lines, and the board has scheduled an emergency no-confidence vote for Friday afternoon. My entire life is collapsing.
I know I made mistakes eight years ago. I was under immense pressure to make partner, and I cracked under the weight of it. But they are my children too. I have a legal right to a court-ordered paternity test. I have a right to visitation.
If you sign the credit guarantee from Apex to save my company, I will agree to waive all custody claims. I will sign whatever non-disclosure agreement you want. We can settle this quietly like two professionals. Please, Hannah. Don't destroy everything I've worked for.
Marcus
A hollow, incredulous laugh escaped my lips. Even now, standing on the edge of the abyss, stripped of his fiancé, his inheritance, and his reputation, Marcus Reynolds still believed that human relationships were commodities to be bartered on an open exchange. He was actually trying to use the threat of visiting his own children as a bargaining chip to save his balance sheet.
The intercom on my desk buzzed softly.
"Hannah?" my COO and best friend, Dana, spoke through the line. "Marcus Reynolds is in the downstairs lobby. He didn't have an appointment, but security says he refuses to leave until he speaks with you."
"Send him up, Dana," I answered calmly. "And have two security officers wait right outside my office doors."
Two minutes later, the double doors opened.
The man who stepped inside looked nothing like the polished executive who had stood on the Boulder veranda on Christmas morning. His tie was crooked, his designer suit was wrinkled, and dark purple hollows hung beneath his bloodshot eyes. He had aged ten years in seventy-two hours.
"Hannah," he breathed, practically lunging toward my desk before catching the sight of the security guards through the glass partition. "Thank God you agreed to see me."
"Sit down, Marcus," I said, not bothering to rise from my chair.
He collapsed into the guest chair, his hands clutching a leather briefcase to his chest. "Did you read my letter? Did you see the terms? It’s a clean deal, Hannah. Apex guarantees my thirty-million-dollar liquidity facility, and I walk away forever. You get full, uncontested legal custody. You never have to see my face again."
I stared at him for five long seconds, feeling a profound sense of pity wash over the last embers of my anger.
"You really don't understand, do you?" I asked softly.
"Understand what?" he stammered. "It's thirty million! For Apex, that’s barely six months of cash flow! You can write it off as an investment!"
"You think you have leverage, Marcus," I said, picking up the certified paternity petition he had sent and tearing it neatly in half, dropping the pieces into the wastebasket beside my desk. "You think you can threaten to take my children to court."
"I am their biological father!" he shouted, a flicker of his old arrogance returning. "The courts will grant me visitation! I have rights!"
"Do you know what happens in a Texas family court when a father who abandoned quadruplets for eight years, lied about their existence to avoid forty-eight thousand dollars a year in statutory support, and forged infertility records attempts to demand custody?" I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the desk. "You will be ordered to pay back-child support with compound interest, calculated on eight years of executive bonuses. The total judgment will exceed four million dollars."
Marcus choked on his own breath.
May you like
"And do you know what happens to your remaining reputation when the court transcripts become public record?" I continued, my voice steady and unyielding. "The board of your company won't just vote you out on Friday, Marcus. They will sue you for breach of fiduciary duty to insulate themselves from the scandal."
The briefcase slipped from Marcus’s fingers, thudding heavily against the floorboards.
