Shonee's POV

The next day...

I was out on the patio, sketching.

That's what I was telling myself, but the garbage on the sketchpad said otherwise.

Sighing, I dropped the pencil, and leaned back in my chair, running both hands over my face.

It was a little past three p.m., almost eight hours since Vincent, Nancy and Ben left for the hospital this morning. There had been zero phone calls or texts from Vincent, and it made me wonder how long it took to get a DNA test done.

I glanced at my phone for the hundredth time before deciding to check up on Mirasol in the study room. She was hard at work on the addition and subtraction equations her Maths tutor, Mr. Shane, had written on the whiteboard. It was good to see her so focused on her studies.

Sighing, I returned to the patio, hoping to have at least received a text from my best friends. I could really use a distraction right now. I unlocked the device. Nothing from James. Nothing from Jordin. I released another deep sigh and dropped my head.

"Busy?"

My head jerked up at the sound of his voice.

Vincent strolled into the patio. He must've arrived not too long ago because he was still dressed in the crisp suit he'd left in this morning. His hair was slightly ruffled, and in his hand was a brown paper envelope. The sight of it sent a jolt through me.

"Not really," I said, sitting up straighter and pushing my sketchpad aside. "Just...trying to pass the time."

Vincent nodded. His expression was very unreadable and part of me wondered if it was deliberate, probably to throw me off. Does this mean I was right?

He held up the envelope.

"Is that it?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied in a tone that matched his expression. "I had to get the process expedited. Figured you were eager for the feedback."

"I wasn't that eager." I tried to downplay it, but Vincent just thrust the envelope into my hands.

"Open it," he simply said.

I hesitated, staring down at the envelope as if the content was a ticking time bomb (It sure felt like one.) My fingers trembled as I peeled back the seal, pulling out a single sheet of paper with the hospital's official letterhead. The document was clinical and concise with a conclusion that jumped out at me like a flashing neon sign:

DNA Test Report
Specimen A: Vincent Beckham
Specimen B: Benjamin Beckham

Probability of Paternity: 99.99%.

Final result: Positive match

Positive match. I read the line again, and again, as if the words would magically rearrange themselves into something else.

But they didn't.

Vincent was Ben's father. No doubt.

"Well?" Vincent's voice broke through my fog.

I shoved the paper back into the envelope. "I was wrong." The sentence felt weird leaving my mouth.

He crossed his arms. "Are you happy now? You wanted proof, and now you have it."

"Vincent, I—"

"No. Don't start, Shonee." He cut me off, his tone growing sharper by the second. The expressionless façade was now wearing off. "You sent me on a wild goose chase today. As if I didn't have enough on my plate, trying to undo the damage Michael caused, you decided this was the time to push this nonsense on me."

"It's not nonsense!" I protested and stood up.

"Oh you know damn right it is!" His eyes blazed. "I get that you don't like Nancy, neither do I. But you're being irrational about it. You're letting the bad blood between the two of you cloud your judgement, making you fabricate stories just to get rid of her!"

"That is not true!" I stepped forward. "I know what I saw and I know what I heard."

"Then it's obvious you're delusional because that's not what it says here." He lifted the envelope.

His tone did nothing but make me angrier. "You can't talk to me like that!"

"I'll talk to you however I want!" He exclaimed. "Because guess what? I am your boss. And as your boss let me warn you, stay the hell away from Nancy."

"You're protecting her?" I scoffed in disbelief. "You can't be serious."

"I mean it, Shonee. If you can't do that, then maybe you're the one who needs to leave this house next."

My mouth just fell open, shocked that he was actually threatening to kick me out just because of Nancy.

"Heyoo." Jordan waltzed into the patio, followed closely by James who had a backpack behind him.

"Hey Mr. B! What's up?" He raised his hand for a high-five, but all Vincent did was snatch the DNA test from the table and walk past him without so much as a glance.

"Whoa, what's got his panties in a bunch?" James frowned, staring at Vincent's receding form. "He was super nice during Mirasol's birthday party."

"Yeah." Jordin agreed, then turned to me. "What happened, Shon?"

I couldn't bring myself to answer. Instead, I sank back into my chair with a heavy sigh.

Jordin took the vacant chair beside me. "Still waiting for an answer."

"Nothing happened," I mumbled.

"Really? Then why do you look so pissed?" James also joined the question barrage, taking the seat next to Jordin.

Knowing my best friends, they weren't going to let up anytime soon if I didn't give them an answer. Plus, there was no point keeping it from them so... "I told Vincent about Ben being Michael's son."

They both shared an expression of astonishment, and then the blastings followed.

"What the fuck, Shon!" James cursed out loud.

"That's exactly what we told you not to do!" Jordin exclaimed.

"But he needed to know, ok!" I fired out in return. "He needed to know. Yesterday Vincent found out about another shady deed Michael did behind his back and it just triggered me to spill the beans." I sucked in a breath. "Michael has so many buried secrets and the last thing I want right now is to be an accomplice in hiding them from Vincent."

James huffed, relaxing in his seat while Jordin pushed her glasses up her nose. "Ok, so you told him. What happened after that?"

I pursed my lips. "He got a DNA test done."

"And?" James pressed on.

The memory of the test result flashed in my mind's eye. "Positive match."

Jordin shook her head.

"But I don't believe it," I quickly added, reinforcing my certainty. "Vincent went to the hospital with Nancy. Knowing how cunning she is, she probably must've done something to tamper with the results."

I was expecting a counter-response, something along the lines of 'you're delusional' or 'you're being paranoid.' But after a few minutes of silence and exchanged glances between Jordin and James, I pushed myself up in my seat, putting my elbows on the table. "What's going on?" My gaze flickered between them. "Do you guys know something?"

Jordin exhaled, "Shonee, the whole point of telling you to keep this Ben conspiracy from Vincent was to give us some time to go digging."

"And unlike you, we actually did what we said we'd do." James pulled out his laptop from the backpack he'd brought with him. "Thanks to Jordin, the social media stalker here..."

She rolled her eyes as James continued, "We found some interesting facts that raise interesting questions."

"Ok." I sat up, completely intrigued.

"We started our search with Nancy," Jordin began. "And it pretty much led to a dead end. I mean, apart from some old posts about her death, her return, and she trying to build a new following on IG by squandering her husband's money on extravagance, there was nothing worth looking into. Nothing about her past or where she'd been all these years. So, we shifted our focus to Michael instead."

James grinned, leaning back in his chair. "We combed through his Instagram, his Twitter, standard snooping procedure. Not much to see there except his weird obsession with Ronaldo."

I raised an eyebrow, managing a small chuckle. "Ronaldo?"

"Yeah, the football player. Every other post was of him," James said, waving a hand dramatically. "Memes, game highlights, photoshopped images of him and Ronaldo shaking hands. The man was a full-on superfan."

"Anyway," Jordin interjected, bringing the conversation back on track, "it wasn't until we checked his Facebook that we found something...interesting."

James turned his laptop toward us, already scrolling through a page which I soon realized was Michael's friends list on FB. "Behold Exhibit A."

He clicked on a profile and a familiar name popped up on the screen.

"Sam Reynolds." I leaned in closer. "He created a Facebook profile for his alias?"

"Yep," Jordin explained. "Probably for whatever shady dealings he was into. But as we dug deeper, we found Exhibit B in Sam Reynolds' friends list."

James tapped on another tab, pulling up a profile with the name Johnson Stewart. "Check it out. Profile picture of Ronaldo, because of course."

"And in his bio," Jordin added, "the details were similar to Michael's. It says they both came from the same city, which is Florida and attended the same high school and university. At first, I didn't think much of it. My guess was they were probably colleagues or childhood buddies. But then..." She trailed off, scrolling through the posts on Johnson Stewart's profile. "I found this."

She stopped scrolling, halting on a particular post. It was a photo of a man and a woman standing in front of a beach, the sky behind them painted with hues of orange and pink from the setting sun.

My breath caught in my throat as I recognized the woman's face. "Holy shit...is that Nancy?"

"Mhm." James nodded. "And Michael. Look at his arm."

Sure enough, Michael's arm was wrapped around Nancy's waist, holding her close to his side as they both smiled at the camera.

"That's not all." Jordin prompted. "Check out the caption."

Three red hearts glowed at the top of the post, increasing my curiosity tenfold.

"And the date."

The details had my eyebrows narrowing. "26th May, 2022."

"That's a whole six months before Nancy's accident in November that same year," Jordin concluded.

I nodded tersely, tapping my chin in thought. "So Michael and Nancy knew each other even before he started working for Vincent."

"And from this post..." James jabbed a thumb at the laptop. "It looks like they may have been friends."

Or something more.

Just then, a loud, high-pitched sound stole our attention, and we all turned to find billows of smoke coming from the direction of the kitchen. 

******