Married at First Sight – Episode 71
Christian read the genetic amendment twice before the meaning reached his face. The first reading produced disbelief. The second produced the sick recognition that Continuum had reached into his body long before he knew its name.
Summer did not ask whether he had betrayed her. Every date in the record placed the sample years before their marriage, and everything they had learned about the network made theft more likely than infidelity.
Still, knowledge did not prevent pain. A pregnancy created from Christian and Nancy carried the shape of an intimacy that had never occurred, and Summer hated Ward for manufacturing even the appearance of it.
The trust ordered independent testing at three laboratories. Christian supplied a new sample under direct observation, while Nancy confirmed hers separately. Lena participated only after her own attorney approved the procedure.
All three results agreed. Christian was the genetic contributor.
The sample had been collected during the same fertility evaluation Victoria arranged years earlier. Continuum’s inventory listed it beneath Vincent’s name, allowing Ward to mislead even the people working below her.
Vincent learned the truth during a sealed hearing. Relief crossed his face before shame replaced it. He had spent weeks imagining a biological child and discovered that the imagined future had already affected him.
Nancy felt something more complicated. Continuum had paired her with the man she once tried to steal from Summer, converting jealousy into laboratory design.
She told Summer she had never been intimate with Christian. Summer answered that she knew. The fact that Nancy needed to say it revealed how thoroughly violation could imitate guilt.
Christian asked Lena’s attorney to make clear that he would assert no parental claim while she was deciding what she wanted. He also requested that Norton money be kept outside her direct care unless administered through the blind trust.
Lena accepted the boundary but asked to speak with him once. On the encrypted call, she studied the man whose face reporters associated with control and wealth.
“Do you want this baby?” she asked.
Christian refused the easy answer. He could feel responsibility, grief, and an unexpected tenderness toward a life made from him without calling any of those feelings ownership.
“I want you safe enough to choose,” he said. “What I want after that cannot come first.”
Lena ended the call without revealing whether the answer comforted her. Summer saw how much restraint cost him and loved him for paying that cost willingly.
That night, they discussed Spark. Christian feared Summer would see their pregnancy differently now that another fetus shared his DNA.
Summer admitted the truth was painful, but Spark had never been valuable because Christian possessed only one possible genetic legacy. Their child was theirs because of choice, love, and the ordinary future they were building.
The reassurance did not erase her insecurity. She asked for time without being treated as cruel, and Christian gave it without demanding proof that their marriage remained safe.
Investigators then opened the original sample ledger. Christian’s vial had been divided twice, but Ward’s records accounted for only one resulting embryo.
Somewhere outside the recovered network, a second sample bearing Christian Norton’s genetic profile was still unaccounted for.