Page 50 of All for her Forgiveness

Kennedy sounded defeated. In all this time that I hated her and wanted revenge, I imagined her facing me as she did in the past, but she doesn't show any emotion.

Not even her hatred. Perhaps she thinks I'm not worthy of it.

"You don't need to come in."

"Are you going to start a war every time I want to see him?"

"No, but the results haven't come back yet," she says as I walk beside her.

"They will come any moment now. I paid an extra fee to have it done more quickly."

Ernest is a little ahead of us, with King in his arms.

Although patience and sensitivity are not my strong suits, I'm not an idiot. Until yesterday, I was the last person Kennedy wanted to see. Maybe I still am, and if I come demanding my rights to my son, there's a chance she'll manage to get the lawyers to prevent me from seeing King.

What we have is not a simple case of paternity recognition. We are two enemies who, together, made a child. I am the one who hired a team to assist the prosecution. Kennedy is the woman whom, until recently, I was certain I wanted to see locked up for the rest of her life for the heinous crime I thought she had helped commit.

My doubt is not about King's paternity but about the conversation I had with Odin and his belief that I was drugged by Pam. Only that would explain my having slept with Kennedy and not remembering.

If it's true, all my convictions will be shattered. If Pam did this, if her intention was to drug me to seduce me, maybe even get pregnant on purpose, what else might she have done? What other lies might she have invented?

Yesterday, right after hanging up the phone with our cousin, I asked Ares to collect all the bottles of whiskey from the library in our grandfather's house and test them. The chance that the supposedly spiked whiskey is still there is small, but if there's a possibility, I won't stop until I'm sure.

I asked him to specifically look for incapacitating drugs that leave a man functional.

He didn't understand a damn thing, I'm sure, but he said he would have an answer by today at the latest.

We all have contacts in various areas, and money opens doors and finds solutions in the blink of an eye.

Kennedy moves ahead and enters the house, while I walk a little behind with her luggage and King's, which Ernest brought to the hospital.

As if my thoughts emit some kind of silent call to my phone, the screen lights up, and on it, the message I read begins to unravel a nightmare and bring to light another: that I made the greatest error in judgment of my life.

Ares:"A modern drug that renders a person conscious and responsive but unable to recall anything the next day was detected in all whiskey bottles, not just one, as you thought. Now are you going to tell me what the hell is going on, Hades?"

Kennedy

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"CanI put him in the crib?" Hades asks as we arrive in my room, and without waiting for my consent, perhaps because he noticed the same thing I did in the Greek's voice, Ernest hands him King and leaves us alone.

Instead of taking my son to his bed, however, he doesn't move. He lifts a sleeping King in front of his face and watches him with such intensity that even though I despise the man, I can't help but be moved.

I see pain in his expression, and I imagine it's because he's thinking about the future, about how to explain to my son, if I'm convicted, that it was him who moved heaven and earth to send me to prison.

The scene before me is painful, and I go to the window, turning my back on the two of them. I barely manage to draw the curtain aside before my phone rings. More to distract myself than out of a desire to talk to anyone, since it's possibly either from my lawyers or the psychiatrist who has been treating me here in Louisiana, I walk to my bag and answer. "Yes?"

"Miss O'Neal, this is the laboratory at Bayou Saint Raphael Hospital. We just wanted to let you know that the DNA test result is ready and has been sent to both your email and Dr. Kostanidis', as you requested."

"Thank you very much."

I look at the device, even though in my peripheral vision, I notice that Hades has put King in the crib and is walking toward me.

I access my email, touching the screen with trembling fingers. In that moment, I do something I never imagined I would be capable of: I pray that my son is Hades', because if I'm convicted, King will be better off with the man who hates me but is honorable than if he's Ryan's, the one I'm sure is Pam's true killer.

I have no doubt that if Corey's family found out about King, if he's Ryan's son, they would do everything to take him away from me.

"Kennedy, what happened?"

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