Part 1: The Shattered Facade
On our anniversary, my best friend gave birth to my husband’s baby. But when the DNA results finally arrived, one line on the report destroyed them both. When the test results came in, the entire room went still.
My husband stared at one sentence printed on the page.
My best friend, who had just delivered the baby, turned white.
And I?
For the first time in three years, I smiled.
Seven days earlier, on my wedding anniversary with Adrian Villareal, I stood at the entrance of a delivery room in a private hospital in Makati and refused to step aside.
Inside was Bianca Reyes, the woman I had loved like a sister for more than a decade.
She had just given birth to a child Adrian was proudly calling his son.
When the nurse stepped out, Adrian reached immediately for the newborn. He touched the baby’s tiny cheek with shocking tenderness and smiled.
We had been married for three years.
I could not remember him ever smiling at me like that.
“Lucia…” Bianca called weakly from the hospital bed.
Her voice was soft, but loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I’m sorry. I never planned to get pregnant either. Please help me talk to Adrian. Even if it’s only so the baby can be placed on the birth certificate and carry his family name.”
That was when I noticed her hand.
On her ring finger shone a large Colombian emerald.
Adrian had bought that ring at a Singapore auction for almost thirty million pesos.
My wedding band, meanwhile, was a plain stainless-steel ring he had bought from a mall kiosk for less than five hundred pesos.
The nurse approached with the certificate of live birth form.
“Father’s name?” she asked.
Before Adrian could speak, I took the clipboard.
“Wait,” I said. “Let’s do a DNA test first.”
It was as if all warmth disappeared from Adrian’s face.
“What did you say?” he asked coldly.
I smiled.
“I want to be certain whose name belongs on this form.”
He handed the baby back to the nurse and turned toward me.
“Lucia dela Cruz, have you lost your mind?”
Whenever he used my full name, I knew he was furious.
For three years, there had not been even the smallest kindness in his voice.
Bianca began to cry.
“Lucia, don’t make Adrian suffer. This is my fault. I’ll leave if I have to.”
“Be quiet for a moment,” I said.
Her eyes widened.
Even Adrian froze.
Maybe because it was the first time I had ever spoken to Bianca without gentleness.
I had stayed silent for three years.
When my mother-in-law called me barren and useless as a wife, I said nothing.
When Adrian disappeared for three nights because of “work,” I kept quiet.
When he removed my name from the company’s emergency contacts so he could look single at business events, I swallowed the humiliation.
But on our anniversary, he was standing in a delivery room with another woman.
And that woman was the same friend who had spent years telling me I had nothing to worry about.
“Adrian,” I said calmly, “if you are so certain the baby is yours, why are you afraid of a test?”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is my son.”
“How do you know?”
The room went silent.
I looked at Bianca.
For one brief moment, shock flashed across her face—quick, almost invisible.
But I saw it.
It was the same expression she had worn three years earlier, when I first smelled unfamiliar perfume inside Adrian’s car.
Back then, she smiled and said, “Lucia, don’t be paranoid. A man like Adrian would never look at me.”
One month later, I saw them together at a hotel in Pasay.
She cried in front of me.
He said he had been drunk, weak, and unable to stop himself.
And like a fool, I believed them.
“If the test proves the baby is Adrian’s,” I told the nurse, “I won’t block the registration. But I want a DNA test.”
“Lucia, enough!” Adrian shouted.
I took out my phone and called my lawyer.
“Atty. Salazar, prepare the petition for a court-ordered paternity test.”
His voice came clearly through the speaker.
“The documents are ready, Ms. dela Cruz. Including the divorce settlement you requested. Should I bring them to the hospital?”
The room went silent.
Even Adrian looked unable to speak.
“Divorce settlement?” he repeated.
I ended the call.
“Isn’t that what you wanted from the beginning?”
Three years earlier, Adrian had married me only because it was his grandmother Doña Elena Villareal’s final wish.
I had been her goddaughter and caregiver during the last months of her life.
On the night of the funeral, Adrian told me only one thing.
“We’ll live separately. Don’t bother me.”
So I lived in the old guest wing of the Villareal ancestral house in San Juan.
He lived in the main house.
For three years, we barely saw each other, even though we shared the same address.
He must have believed I did not know how to leave.
He thought I had no choices of my own.
He thought I would remain silent while he slowly broke me down.
Three days later, Atty. Salazar delivered the divorce agreement to Adrian’s office in BGC.
He tore it apart.
We sent another copy.
He tore that one too.
So I brought the third copy myself.
When I reached the forty-seventh floor of Villareal Prime Holdings, his assistant, Noel Ramirez, tried to stop me.
“Ma’am Lucia, Sir Adrian is in a board meeting.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Then everyone can hear it together.”
I opened the conference room door.
Inside sat board members, senior executives, and several lawyers.
Adrian stood at the head of the long table, glaring at me.
“What are you doing here?”
I placed the divorce papers in front of him.
Then I pulled out a USB drive.
“Before you rip this one up too,” I said, “watch the CCTV footage from the hotel where Bianca checked in on Valentine’s Day.”
Adrian’s face lost all color.
“You were not in Manila that day,” I continued. “But she was not alone in the presidential suite.”
Before he could stop me, I plugged the USB into the boardroom laptop.
The man beside Bianca appeared on the large screen.
Adrian gripped the edge of the table.
Because the man holding my best friend was not a stranger.
It was his brother.
