Villain's Breeding System: Evolving 999+ Harem into an SSS-Rank Legion-Chapter 267 - Devil’s Support After destroying one Happy Family

Chapter 267: Chapter 267 - Devil’s Support After destroying one Happy Family

The first volume. The restrained fury of the morning finally finding its full size in the evening of the corridor. The words at full, unmanaged volume — not the quiet-and-worse of the morning, the different quality of a man who had held himself together for seven hours and had arrived at the end of the hold.

She looked at the envelope again. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

She bent down.

The careful, belly-forward bend of a pregnant woman picking up something from the floor. She picked up the folder. She opened it with the slow, specific quality of someone moving slowly because moving fast would mean arriving at the information faster.

She read it.

Once.

Twice.

That clinical language of a DNA report — the percentages, the markers, the clear, unambiguous, scientifically-weighted conclusion at the bottom of the page. The ’0.00% probability’ of paternity. The ’alternative paternity indicated’ language that she had never expected to see on a page about her baby.

She read it again.

The room — the waiting room, the vending machine, the other families, the evening light — did something she had never experienced a room doing before. It contracted. That physical, chest-compressing quality of a world getting smaller very fast.

"No," she said.

The word of someone who was refusing information.

"No, this — this isn’t —" She looked up at Vikram. "This is wrong. This test is wrong. There’s a — the needle was — there was a mistake, there was —"

"There wasn’t," he said. The flat, gone-past-arguing quality of it. "I was there. I watched every step. I brought Dr. Anand specifically because I know him and I know he doesn’t make mistakes."

"Then the lab —"

"Same lab that ran my genetic profile two years ago when we were trying," he said. "Same lab. Same protocols. Same conclusion."

"Vikram —"

"Don’t."

"Please —" She moved toward him. That automatic, toward-the-person-she-needed quality of moving toward Vikram. "Please, listen to me. I know what this says. I know what it says but I’m telling you — I’m telling you I know this child is —"

"The paper says what it says."

"The paper is WRONG —"

"Then take it up with science," he said. That flat, devastated quality of a man who had spent seven hours hoping and had spent the last ninety minutes reading a result and had arrived here with nothing left.

She grabbed his arm.

"Wait —" The grip of her hand on his forearm. The full, tight, don’t-go quality of it. "Wait. Please. Vikram — please, just — let’s go home. Let’s talk. Let’s — we can take another test. A different lab. A different — please. Please don’t — don’t do this. Don’t leave. I know I was wrong, I know what I did, but this baby —"

She was on her knees.

She had not decided to be on her knees.

She was on her knees the way she had been on the floor this morning — the automatic, full-body commitment of someone who had run out of other available positions.

Her hands on his leg.

Both of them, the full, clutching, please-don’t-go grip of her hands on her husband’s leg in the corridor of the hospital with the paper on the floor between them.

"This child is yours," she said. Looking up at him. The full, wet, looking-up-from-the-floor quality of it — her face tilted up, her eyes on his, her hands on his leg. "I know it is. I know it is. Please. Please believe me. Please don’t — we tried for this baby. We tried for so long. Please don’t —"

"Let go of my leg," he said.

The words of someone who was not going to change.

"Vikram —"

"Let. Go."

She held tighter.

That helpless quality of holding tighter when someone wants you to release — the grip of someone who knew that letting go meant something that could not be taken back.

"Please," she said. The raw quality of the word. Not the diplomatic please of this morning or the exhausted please of the room. The bare, stripped, nothing-else-available please of a woman on the floor of a hospital corridor with a DNA report beside her and the only six years she had in her hands. "Please. I’m begging you. Don’t —"

He looked down at her.

At the picture of his pregnant wife on her knees in a hospital corridor, clutching his leg, crying.

She watched his face.

She watched it for something — for the crack, for a moment she had seen before in arguments, in fights, in the ordinary currency of six years, when his face showed the thing below the held position. The human thing below the decision.

She watched for it.

It didn’t come.

"Leave me," he said.

And he pulled his leg.

The full, deliberate, freeing motion of his leg from her grip — not violent, that clean quality of someone removing themselves from a grip with no more force than necessary and exactly as much as was needed.

She stumbled.

Her hands, released from his leg, finding no purchase — the forward, momentum-of-release stumble of someone whose grip-point had been removed. She went forward. Her belly close to the floor, her hands hitting the linoleum.

She lay on the floor.

The hospital corridor floor, cold, that hard quality of institutional linoleum under her hands and her knees and the bump of her belly nearly touching it.

She lay there.

She didn’t try to get up.

There was a moment — that beaten-to-the-floor moment of someone who has tried everything and has been answered by a man walking away down a corridor — where getting up was a concept she was aware of and could not yet apply to herself.

She heard his footsteps.

Walking away.

That receding quality of them — the sound of someone leaving, measured in the steps between here and the exit, the steps getting quieter and then not there.

She lay on the floor.

She put her cheek on the linoleum.

She looked at the report beside her.

At the numbers. The percentages. The ’0.00’ at the bottom.

"No," she said, to it.

The word of someone having a private argument with a piece of paper.

"No. You’re wrong."

The paper said nothing back.

She closed her eyes.

"Are you alright?"