You’re raising a dead woman’s affair baby.”
The words slammed into me like a truck. My sister-in-law, Isabel, stood in my living room, waving a DNA test in my face like she’d uncovered the crime of the century. But this wasn’t about my daughter. No, this was about a cruel lie my brother, Ronaldo, had fed his fiancée.
I just stood there, my brain struggling to catch up. You know those moments where reality bends, and you just stare, trying to process what just happened? Yeah, that was me.
“She’s not yours,” Isabel repeated, louder this time, as if she were declaring a grand truth to the universe. “You’re raising a dead woman’s affair baby.”
I stared at her, and then, to my own surprise, I started laughing. Not just a chuckle—a full, stomach-clenching, tear-inducing laugh. The sheer ridiculousness of it all hit me at once.
Isabel’s face burned red. “What the hell is so funny?”
I wiped a tear from my eye. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that you took a DNA test on my daughter BEHIND MY BACK? You seriously think you’re some kind of detective? Who does that?”
Her mouth snapped shut, but her eyes darted to Ava, who stood by my leg, tiny fingers gripping my jeans. My little girl. Six years old, innocent, sweet, and now staring up at me with confused, worried eyes.
That’s when my laughter died.
“Get out of my house,” I snapped.
“Jake, you don’t understand—”
“No, YOU don’t understand,” I cut in, my voice like steel. “You barged into MY home, waved around some stupid DNA test IN FRONT OF MY CHILD, and for what? To prove some sick theory? To what, ruin our lives? Do you want a medal? GET. OUT.”
Ava tugged on my sleeve, her voice small. “Daddy? Why is Aunt Isabel mad? Did I do something bad?”
The question shattered something inside me. I knelt down, cupping her face. “No, sweetheart. You didn’t do anything wrong. Aunt Isabel made a mistake, that’s all.”
Behind me, Isabel’s face crumpled. “Jake, please, if you’d just listen—”
“You’ve done enough,” I said, standing and lifting Ava into my arms. “Leave. Now.”
As Isabel hesitated, Ava whispered in my ear, “Are you still my daddy?”
My breath hitched. I hugged her tight, pressing my face into her hair to hide the burning in my eyes. “Always, baby girl. Always and forever.”
Let me back up.
I’m Jake. I’m 30 years old, and I have a daughter, Ava. She’s not my biological daughter—never has been, never will be. But that’s never mattered.
Ava’s parents were my best friends, Hannah and Daniel. We grew up together, thick as thieves. Hannah was like a sister to me, Daniel like a brother. They got married, had a beautiful baby girl, and then, three months later, a car accident took them both away.
There was no family left to take Ava in. No one except me.
At 24, I wasn’t planning on being a dad. I wasn’t even sure I liked kids. But leaving Ava to the foster system? That wasn’t an option. So, I stepped up. Signed the papers. Became her father in every way that mattered.
My family knew. My daughter knew. No secrets, no lies. But apparently, my brother and his fiancée had cooked up an entirely different version of reality.
Looking back, the warning signs were there. A few weeks before the DNA test disaster, we were at my parents’ house. Isabel had been staring at an old photo on the wall—one of me, Hannah, and Daniel.
“That’s Ava’s mom,” I said when she asked.
Isabel’s expression shifted. She just nodded and kept staring. Something about the way she traced the picture’s edge made me uneasy.
“They look happy,” she finally said.
“They were,” I replied, smiling at the memory. “Hannah had the kind of laugh that made everyone else laugh too. And Daniel… man, he was the most dependable guy I knew. He was so nervous when Ava was born that he drove to the hospital with his slippers still on.”
Isabel turned to me with a strange glint in her eyes. “And how did you feel when they had Ava?”
The question was weird, but I answered honestly. “Overjoyed. I was the first person they called. Brought them terrible hospital coffee. Stayed up all night with Daniel while Hannah slept. He kept saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m a dad.’ We just sat there grinning.”
“You must have been very close,” she pressed.
“They were family,” I said simply. “Not by blood, but by choice.”
I didn’t know then that later that night, Isabel would pull out her phone and make a quiet call in the hallway. That she would set this whole thing in motion.
So, yeah, when I found out what she had done, I was furious. And I knew Ronaldo had been behind it.
“My brother put you up to this, didn’t he?” I asked her later.
She hesitated. Then I saw it in her face.
Of course, he had.
When I confronted Ronaldo, I was already done with him. But I needed to hear it from his own mouth.
“You actually thought Ava was my biological daughter? That I had an affair with Hannah? Lied about it for years?”
Ronaldo rolled his eyes. “You never wanted kids, Jake. Then out of nowhere, you adopt a baby? What was I supposed to think?”
“Maybe that I loved her parents? That I didn’t want their daughter to grow up alone? That I did something SELFLESS for once in my life?”
“I just—”
“You just WHAT? Convinced your fiancée to go behind my back and humiliate me in front of my kid? And what was your plan when the test came back?”
Silence.
“You didn’t think that far, did you?”
Ronaldo looked away.
“Let me tell you something,” I said, voice shaking. “Ava isn’t a burden. She isn’t a mistake. She is my daughter. My family. And if you can’t respect that, then I don’t want you in my life.”
For the first time, my brother looked like he regretted something.
Isabel, at least, had the decency to apologize. She even left Ronaldo. “If he could lie to me for two years about this, what else is he capable of?” she admitted.
And me? I kept doing what I’d always done.
That night, as I tucked Ava into bed, she looked up at me. “Daddy? I’m YOUR daughter, right?”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Always.”
That’s the only truth that has ever mattered.
No DNA test, no cruel words, no ridiculous accusations could ever change that.
Family isn’t blood. It’s love. And Ava? She is mine.
Forever.
