Chapter 4 — The Man in the Photograph
By sunrise, my lawyers had the footage.
By noon, Lauren was charged.
By evening, the DNA test confirmed what she had already confessed with silence.
The twins were not biologically mine.
For one minute, I sat alone in my office and stared at the results.
Not mine.
The words should have broken me.
Instead, I thought of their tiny fingers gripping Hannah’s shirt.
Their sleepy faces.
Their trust.
Their helplessness.
Blood did not make me their father.
Love had already done that.
I filed for emergency custody.
Lauren’s lawyers came fast.
Expensive.
Loud.
Ruthless.
They painted her as overwhelmed.
They painted Hannah as unstable.
They painted me as a jealous husband looking for revenge.
Then Hannah’s flash drive changed everything.
It contained videos.
Photos.
Audio recordings.
Dates.
Times.
Lauren laughing while the babies cried.
Lauren threatening Hannah’s son.
Lauren telling someone on the phone,
“Ethan will raise them. He’s too proud to admit they aren’t his.”
The judge’s face hardened when that clip played.
But the biggest shock came from a photograph.
It was found inside Lauren’s private safe.
A man stood beside her at a beach resort.
His arm around her waist.
His face half-hidden by sunglasses.
My lawyer zoomed in.
I knew him.
Nathan Vale.
My former business partner.
The man who had disappeared after stealing investor money from my company three years ago.
The same year Lauren became pregnant.
The same man I had spent a fortune trying to locate.
Lauren had not only betrayed me.
She had tied my family to the man who had tried to destroy my life.
And according to the documents in her safe, Nathan had never really disappeared.
Lauren had been sending him money.
My money.
Every month.
Hidden under fake charity accounts.
The room around me seemed to tilt.
Then my lawyer placed one final paper in front of me.
A flight reservation.
Lauren had booked three tickets.
One for herself.
One for Nathan Vale.
And one listed only as “infant dependent.”
She had planned to take one of the twins.
Not both.
Just one.
May you like
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, I knew exactly what I had to do.
