Not the knowing. Julian could manage what he knew. It was the shape of the unknown, the outline of something he could not yet fully see, could only sense at its edges, something that had been planned carefully enough that it had looked, to every camera and every guard, like nothing at all.

"Sir." The voice came back, slightly breathless. "I’m pulling the footage now. The nursery window for that period." Another pause, longer, the kind that meant something was being seen for the first time. "Sir, there.." A stop.

"What?" Julian said. "There’s a gap." Julian went very still.

"In the footage. Fourteen minutes. The timestamp runs, but the image is static. Same frame repeating." The voice had changed register entirely now. "Sir, someone looped the feed."

The car park below continued its ordinary business.

People walking. People carrying flowers. Someone loading a pram into a car with the cheerful exhaustion of a new parent.

Julian watched none of it.

"Don’t touch anything," he said quietly. "Don’t speak to anyone. Lock the footage where it is and send it directly to me." He paused. "And get me the name of every person who had access to that camera system in the last four days."

"Yes, sir."

"And find out," Julian said, the quietness of his voice doing the work that volume did for other men, "what happened in those fourteen minutes."

He ended the call. Stood at the window.

The city moved below him. The morning continued. Inside the room behind him Amara was smiling at Janet’s face and holding flowers and beginning, slowly, to breathe again.

He would not tell her yet.

He would not bring this into that room until he knew exactly what it was he was carrying. Until the shape of it was clear and the edges were defined and he understood fully what had been done and who had done it and what it meant for the small warm lives currently sleeping in that nursery.

But he knew now.

He knew the way he always knew, in the gut, in the bone, in the place beneath thought where truth lived before language reached it.

Seb had not come to the hospital simply to watch the DNA results arrive. He had come because something had already been done.

And Julian was going to find out exactly what.

Julian stepped back into the VIP room quietly to see Amara smiling.

She sat carefully against the pillows, her hair messy around her face, holding their son like he was the center of the universe. James stood nearby, pretending to be calm while secretly making funny faces at the baby girl when he thought nobody was noticing. Janet was laughing quietly beside them.

For one small second, the room looked normal. Like a family. Like peace. Julian leaned against the doorframe and simply watched.

After the nightmare of the past hours, seeing Amara happy again felt dangerous. Fragile. Like holding a glass in your bare hands. His wife looked up and caught him staring.

"What?" she asked suspiciously.

Julian shook his head slowly. "Nothing. I just realized you still look pretty even when you almost kill someone today."

Amara gasped dramatically. "Excuse me? I was graceful." James snorted. Janet nearly choked trying not to laugh.

"You did? Who did he try to kill?" James asked her. "He deserved it," Amara said proudly.

Julian walked toward the bed, the corner of his mouth lifting despite the heavy thoughts sitting in his head. God, he loved this woman.

Even angry, exhausted, and sleep-deprived, she still found a way to light up every room she entered. He bent down and kissed her forehead gently.

"You need to eat something," he said softly. Amara immediately frowned. "It’s soup, Amara. Not poison."

"You don’t know that." Julian sighed dramatically toward the ceiling. "This is the mother of my children."

"The very same." James laughed under his breath while Janet shook her head fondly. Julian looked at them both. "Stay with her until I get back."

Amara’s smile faded slightly. "Where are you going?"

"Just to confirm something." The calmness in his voice was practiced too perfectly. Too carefully. Amara noticed it immediately because she knew him too well.

Her fingers tightened slightly around the baby. "Julian..." He kissed her before she could ask more questions.

Slowly. Tenderly. The kind of kiss that promised things without words. "I’ll be back soon," he murmured against her lips. "Try to rest."

Then he looked toward Janet, narrowing his eyes playfully. "And you," he pointed accusingly, "stop smiling too much at my baby boy." Janet blinked innocently. "What?"

"He’s too young to fall in love." The room burst into laughter. Even Amara laughed hard enough to wince afterward. James shook his head. "You’re jealous of a newborn?"

"I’m a protective father," Julian corrected proudly. "You need help," Janet informed him.

"Probably." For a moment, the heaviness disappeared. Just for a moment. Julian held onto that sound, Amara’s laughter as he walked out of the room.

The second the VIP door closed behind him, his smile vanished completely. His face turned cold. Sharp. Dangerously focused. Two security men immediately straightened.

"Guard the door," Julian ordered calmly. "Nobody enters without my permission."

"Yes, sir." He walked through the quiet hospital hallway with long steady steps, his assistant and two of his men already waiting near the surveillance room downstairs.

The atmosphere changed instantly around him. No more jokes. No more warmth. Only business.

The hospital camera room smelled like burnt coffee and stress. Screens covered the walls, flickering with endless footage of hallways, nurses, patients, and elevators.

Julian stood in front of the main monitor. "Show me the missing minute again." One of the technicians swallowed nervously. "Sir... it was erased." Julian looked at him once. That was enough to make the poor man nearly stop breathing. "Move."

The man jumped out of the chair so fast it almost rolled backward. Julian sat down calmly, fingers already moving across the keyboard. Fast. Precise. Within seconds, lines of encrypted files flashed across the screen.

His men exchanged looks quietly behind him. Then..

"There," Julian said coldly. The deleted footage flickered back to life. Everyone in the room went silent. The hallway outside the neonatal wing appeared on screen.

Nurses moved in and out. Machines beeped softly in the background. Then Julian’s eyes narrowed. Three incubators. Not one.

Three newborn baby girls had been moved through that hallway that night. All inside portable incubators.

Meaning... Someone could have switched a child without anyone noticing. The room suddenly felt too small. Julian replayed the footage again. And again. His jaw tightened harder each time.

Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe. But Julian had stopped believing in coincidences a very long time ago.