Twelve Hours After Giving Birth, My Husband Hit Me, but His Face Changed When He Saw the Old Man Standing on the Threshold

Twelve hours after giving birth, my husband hit me in the face, and I covered my newborn child with my back.

I was still lying in the hospital’s white room when Davit came in. My body hurt, my lips were dry, and the small blue blanket that my mother had sewn herself for all four daughters was spread over my hands. But Davit did not ask about my condition or say anything about the birth. His gaze froze directly on the boy lying in the bed.

We had four daughters. For years, Davit repeated that the family absolutely needed a son, the continuer of the family name. And he treated this pregnancy as if it were the last chance.

The baby opened his eyes.

He had dark, piercing blue eyes.

Davit’s smile disappeared from his face.

“This is not my child,” he said.

“Newborns’ eye color often changes,” I answered quietly. “Besides, my father has exactly such eyes.”

“Shut up!”

His voice made even the walls of the room tremble. The nurse looked in anxiously from the doorway, but Davit gestured for her to leave.

“No one in my family has blue eyes. You cheated on me.”

Then everything happened in one second.

His hand struck my face. My head turned to the side, my cheek burned like fire, but my body acted before I did. I wrapped both arms around the baby and turned so that Davit could no longer get near him.

My little one trembled.

“Pay for the paternity test yourself,” Davit whispered. “I want a divorce. I’ll take the girls too. And you perish together with your bastard.”

At these words, I looked toward the door.

My father was standing there.

William Carter was wearing an old, faded flannel shirt and holding a small blue teddy bear that he had brought for his grandchild. For years, Davit thought that my father was simply a poor, retired state official. My father had never corrected him. When he was with his grandchildren, military ranks had no importance.

But now I saw his eyes.

The same ice-blue color as my child’s.

Davit followed my gaze toward the door.

“And who are you?” he growled at my father. “Get out. This is a family matter.”

My father answered nothing.

His silence proved more frightening than Davit’s shouting. He slowly put the teddy bear on the table, then slipped his hand into the inner pocket of his jacket.

“What’s happening, old man?” Davit laughed ironically. “Are you getting ready to call someone?”

My father took out a heavy, black communications telephone. I had seen such a device only once years earlier, when military vehicles unexpectedly came to our house.

The laughter froze on Davit’s face.

My father pressed one button and brought the telephone to his ear.

His shoulders straightened. The quiet grandfather disappeared. In his place returned the man whom thousands of soldiers had once obeyed.

“This is Lieutenant General William Carter,” he said.

Then he looked at the red mark remaining on my cheek, looked at the baby, and asked quietly:

“Davit Miller. Confirm his place of employment and all state contracts connected with his department…”

When my father uttered the last word, the air in the room seemed to grow heavy. Davit froze for several seconds, then put his confident expression back on.

“What kind of theater is this?” he asked. “Your father has probably become confused with age.”

My father kept the telephone to his ear.

“Yes, search for his correspondence and financial reports from the last three years,” he said. “Especially regarding the sums transferred to contractors.”

Davit leaned toward me.

“Did you arrange this?”

“I was lying in the hospital giving birth to a child,” I told him. “How could I have arranged anything?”

His fingers clenched into a fist. For the first time, I saw anger toward me mixed with fear.

The nurse and a security employee came to the door. The nurse looked at my cheek, then at Davit.

“Sir, violence is not allowed here,” she said.

“She is my wife,” Davit answered. “It is a family matter.”

“This is a hospital,” the security employee said sternly. “If you touch her once more, I will take you outside.”

My father ended the call and came to the baby’s crib. The teddy bear was still on the table. A small silver thread was wrapped around one of its ears, because my father had always been afraid that the toy would be damaged on the way.

“Elena, you can leave the baby with me, if you want,” he told me.

“No,” Davit shouted immediately. “He is my son.”

My father looked straight at him.

“First you will have to prove it.”

Davit laughed bitterly.

“Do you think three stars give you the right to do everything?”

He pronounced the word “three” as if he had accidentally realized whom he was speaking to. My father only lowered his eyes for one second.

“No,” he said. “Responsibility gives you rights.”

The next morning, at ten o’clock, we were taken to the clinic’s genetics department. My mother left my four girls in the neighboring room. The oldest, twelve-year-old Nia, stood at the door holding a crumpled piece of paper in her hand.

“Mom, why was Dad shouting at you?” she asked.

Her question pierced my heart. I wanted to say that everything would be all right, but I no longer trusted those words.

“Because he became afraid,” I answered.

“Of what?”

“Of the truth.”

Davit heard the answer and his face tightened.

“Be careful, Elena. If the test shows that the baby is not mine, I will take the girls to court. If it shows that he is mine, I will use everything against you.”

My father calmly opened his leather folder.

“You have already used everything you had,” he told him. “Now we will see what you have left.”

I saw only a few sheets in the folder, but the government seal could be seen on the top page. I asked my father what it was.

“Not yet,” he answered.

That same evening, when we were alone in the room, my father closed the window and said to me quietly:

“Elena, Davit did not merely question your loyalty. He hid something bigger. Loans taken out in your name, strange transfers, and one file connected with my service.”

“Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“Because I wanted him to reveal himself.”

There was a knock at the door. A lawyer who had known my father for years entered. He was holding a sealed folder.

“General, the answer has arrived,” he said.

Davit immediately stepped back.

“What answer?”

The lawyer put the folder on the table and touched the seal with his finger.

“This is not only a paternity test,” he said. “Before we open it, you must know that the result will change two lives at once.”

My father reached for the seal, and I realized that only one second remained before he opened it…

My father’s fingers broke the seal of the sealed folder. Only the light rustling of paper could be heard in the room. Davit stood at the door and tried to keep a calm expression, but his right eyelid was trembling continuously.

The lawyer took out the first sheet.

“The genetic correspondence between the father and the child is ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent,” he said.

Davit immediately exhaled.

“You see?” he exclaimed. “He is mine.”

I looked at the baby. His tiny fingers clutched the blue blanket. Instead of joy, cold entered my heart. The test had proved my truth, but there was no victory on Davit’s face.

The lawyer unfolded the second sheet.

“The determination of paternity is not complete. Mr. Miller, you are not the child’s biological father.”

The color left Davit’s face.

“That is impossible. You just said…”

“The genetic correspondence between the child and your father-in-law is ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent,” the lawyer continued. “The result confirms a direct relationship between the child and General Carter. He is your wife’s father. Therefore, the child is connected to you only by a family relationship, not biologically.”

“My father has no connection with me!” Davit shouted.

My father looked at him calmly.

“That is exactly why a second sample was necessary. Your sample showed that I am the child’s grandfather. But you cannot be his father.”

Davit leaned against the wall. The telephone fell from his hand onto the floor.

“Elena, tell me this is a mistake.”

“You demanded the test yourself,” I told him. “And I have been telling the truth this whole time.”

“Who were you with?”

“No one. You simply could not bear that the child carried something from me and my family.”

The lawyer took out the third sheet. This time my father stopped me.

“Now the second matter,” he said. “The audit of the accounts showed that Davit took out four loans in my daughter’s name. The money came from the accounts of state contractors and was then transferred to his personal company.”

Davit immediately turned to my father.

“You are destroying my career!”

“No,” my father answered. “Your decisions are destroying it.”

The security employee returned to the room. Two investigators stood behind him. First they looked at Davit’s cheek, then at the documents.

“Mr. Miller, we have several questions for you,” one of them said.

Davit took a step toward me.

“Elena, tell them this is a family argument.”

For the first time, I did not step back.

“This is no longer only a family argument.”

They put handcuffs on him. I held the baby more tightly. I thought the hardest part was over.

But at that very moment my father’s telephone rang.

He answered, listened to several words, and an expression appeared on his face that I had never seen before.

“Elena,” he said, “the file Davit stole does not concern only financial fraud. It contains secret data about military suppliers.”

Beyond the door, Davit turned his head. He had heard this.

My father slowly lowered the telephone.

“And now they are saying that the file has already been sent to a foreign country…”