Chapter 4 - Midnight Shadows and the Locked Drawer
The question that tore through Jack’s mind wasn't just *what* had happened, but *why now?*
Why would Evelyn choose this exact night—at two in the morning, while Jack was supposed to be forty miles away at a construction crisis—to launch a murderous assault? Evelyn Vance was a calculated tactician. She didn't ruin her manicure with violence unless she was driven by desperate, cornered madness.
"Why tonight, Mother?" Jack demanded, his voice thick with a dangerous, unstable rage as the sound of distant sirens drew closer. "You've known about this alleged affair for months if your private eyes were tailing her. Why break into our house while I was supposed to be away? What were you doing here?"
Evelyn's eyes darted toward the nursery's brass-handled side table, where Clara kept the baby’s feeding logs and medical discharge papers. For a split second, Jack caught a flicker of panic in his mother’s cold eyes—a crack in the icy porcelain façade.
Jack didn't hesitate. Stepping over Clara with protective care, he lunged toward the dresser before Evelyn could move. On top of the wooden surface lay an open Manila envelope, stamped with the red emblem of a private genetic diagnostic lab in Chicago. Next to it lay a pair of surgical scissors and a plastic zip-top bag containing a small lock of dark newborn hair—cut clean from baby Leo's head.
Jack’s stomach plummeted. "You came here to take his hair. You came here while Clara was sleeping to do a DNA test."
"I was doing what you were too cowardly to do!" Evelyn spat, taking an aggressive step forward, her fingernails curling like claws. "I was protecting our blood! I wasn't going to let that bastard child inherit the family estate!"
"No," Clara sobbed from the floor, struggling to pull herself up against the edge of the rocking chair. "That’s not why she did it, Jack... she wasn't taking his hair... she was trying to switch the tests!"
Jack looked back and forth between them, his head spinning.
"She brought her own swab!" Clara cried out, her voice raspy and hoarse. "I woke up because Leo was crying. When I came into the nursery, she was holding a swab covered in someone else's saliva, trying to run it inside Leo’s mouth to contaminate the hospital newborn screening card! When I stopped her, when I grabbed her arm... she went completely wild! She screamed that if she couldn't prove the baby wasn't a Vance, she would make sure Leo never saw tomorrow!"
The horror settled over the nursery like a toxic fog. Evelyn hadn't come to find the truth; she had come to manufacture a lie so absolute that it would sever Jack from his wife and child forever.
"You lying little rat!" Evelyn shrieked, breaking character completely. She lunged toward Clara again, her fingers aimed at Clara's throat, but Jack caught her by the forearm, twisting her wrist back with enough force to make the older woman cry out in sharp pain.
"Don't touch her," Jack snarled, his voice trembling with a terrifying, pitch-black wrath. "Don't you dare touch my wife."
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Outside, red and blue lights began flashing through the sheer white nursery curtains, painting the walls in the colors of an emergency room.
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