Chapter 5 - THE SECOND PREGNANCY
For several seconds, all I could hear was the faint hum of the refrigerator.
Brooke’s breathing came through the phone.
Elise stood across from me with one hand pressed against the counter.
I looked down at my stomach.
My daughter moved once beneath my palm.
I forced my voice to stay level.
“Whose ultrasound photos were they?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“You said Natalie was holding them.”
“Yes.”
“And Ryan was there.”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone say she was pregnant?”
Brooke began crying again.
“Mom hugged her.”
I closed my eyes.
“That is not an answer.”
“She said congratulations.”
The betrayal became almost clinical in its precision.
Ryan had sat beside me at my anatomy scan four weeks earlier.
He had held my hand when the technician showed us our daughter’s profile.
He had kissed my forehead afterward.
Then he had apparently gone to his parents’ house and looked at another woman’s ultrasound.
Maybe his child.
Maybe his future.
Maybe the future he planned to fund by stripping mine apart.
“Did Ryan touch her?” I asked.
Brooke hesitated.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He had his hand on her back.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of the question.
I did not need a photograph of a kiss to understand what I was hearing.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because Ryan told Dad last night that if anybody goes down, it should be me.”
There it was.
Not remorse.
Fear.
Brooke was helping me because the people she protected were willing to sacrifice her.
I could live with that.
For now.
“Send everything you have to Detective Vasquez.”
“I deleted the video.”
“Nothing is truly deleted.”
“She already has my phone.”
“Then tell her about the plan to provoke me.”
“I did.”
“And the ultrasound photos.”
“I didn’t.”
“Do it.”
“Claire, Mom will never forgive me.”
I stared at the wine stain still drying on the floor.
“Your mother watched your father put a cigarette against a pregnant woman.”
Brooke made a choking sound.
“You should be worrying about what kind of person forgives that.”
I ended the call.
At 10:30 a.m., my divorce attorney arrived.
Her name was Rebecca Sloan.
She was in her late forties, wore a charcoal suit, and spoke as if every sentence had already survived three rounds of cross-examination.
She looked around the penthouse once.
“Premarital property?”
“Yes.”
“Prenup?”
“Missing from my safe.”
“Digital copy?”
“With the firm that drafted it.”
“Good.”
I exhaled.
Ryan could steal paper.
He could not erase everyone else’s copy.
Rebecca spent an hour mapping the battlefield.
Emergency protection order.
Exclusive possession of the penthouse.
Preservation orders for financial accounts.
Discovery requests for Bennett Strategic Holdings.
Temporary restraints preventing Ryan from selling, transferring, hiding, or borrowing against marital assets.
I interrupted.
“Can we include my company shares?”
“If they’re separate property, we’ll identify them explicitly.”
“What about the money already transferred?”
“We trace it.”
“And if it’s gone?”
“Then we find what it bought.”
I thought of Natalie Ross.
“Can we subpoena the fertility clinic?”
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
I slid the document across the counter.
She read it twice.
Then she looked at me.
“This payment came from your account?”
“Yes.”
“Without permission?”
“Yes.”
“And your husband was planning fertility treatment with another woman?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
Rebecca’s mouth tightened.
“Then we subpoena everything.”
By noon, the protection-order petition had been filed.
At 1:15 p.m., I received a call from CypherCloud’s outside investigator.
Her name was Priya Shah.
She told me the forensic team had found a hidden wireless bridge connected behind a cabinet in my office.
It had been installed to route traffic through my home network while disguising the device using my normal workstation signature.
“Could Ryan have installed it?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“Could I have?”
“Technically yes.”
“That’s exactly what he wanted.”
Priya did not disagree.
“Claire, we also recovered deleted browser artifacts.”
“What kind?”
“Searches for your company’s data-loss-prevention thresholds.”
I felt a cold pressure behind my ribs.
“When?”
“Over the last six weeks.”
“From my computer?”
“From a browser profile created under Ryan’s name.”
For the first time since the nightmare began, I felt something close to relief.
He had left a trace.
Then Priya continued.
“But that profile was deleted yesterday.”
“Before the dinner?”
“Yes.”
Planned.
Again.
Everything came back to that word.
This was not a marriage collapsing in one violent night.
It was a structure built quietly beneath me.
At 2:00 p.m., I received a notification from the building concierge.
A woman was downstairs asking to see me.
Name: Natalie Ross.
Elise read the message over my shoulder.
“No.”
“I want to hear what she says.”
“No.”
“Security can bring her to the conference lounge.”
“Absolutely not.”
I looked at Rebecca.
The attorney considered it.
“Do not meet her alone.”
Elise threw up her hands.
“Why are we even considering this?”
“Because if she came here voluntarily, she may be frightened.”
“Or she came to manipulate Claire.”
Rebecca nodded.
“That too.”
I pressed the intercom.
“Send her to the residents’ conference room on thirty-nine.”
Elise stared at me.
“You are six months pregnant and just got out of the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re about to meet your husband’s pregnant mistress.”
“Possibly.”
“You’re insane.”
“Apparently Ryan has been trying to establish that in writing.”
Elise almost smiled despite herself.
Ten minutes later, I walked into the conference room with Rebecca beside me and a security guard outside.
Natalie Ross stood near the window.
She looked nothing like the person I had imagined.
She was not glamorous.
She was not dressed to compete with me.
She looked tired.
Terrified, actually.
She wore black leggings, a winter coat, and no makeup.
Her hands were shaking.
Her stomach was flat.
Not visibly pregnant.
I stopped across the table from her.
“You wanted to see me.”
Natalie looked at Rebecca.
“Who is she?”
“My attorney.”
Natalie’s face went whiter.
“Then maybe I shouldn’t be here.”
“You came here.”
She swallowed.
“I didn’t know what Ryan was doing.”
I said nothing.
She reached into her purse.
The security guard shifted outside.
Natalie slowly placed a folder on the table.
“I thought he was leaving you.”
My chest tightened, but I kept my expression still.
“He told me you had been separated privately for almost a year.”
“We shared a bed last week.”
Natalie looked away.
“He said you were only staying together until after the baby was born.”
My attorney spoke.
“Ms. Ross, are you represented by counsel?”
“No.”
“You may want to be.”
Natalie gave a small, humorless laugh.
“I definitely want to be.”
I pointed at the folder.
“What is that?”
“Everything I have.”
I did not touch it.
Rebecca did.
She opened it and began scanning the documents.
Her face hardened.
“What?” I asked.
She turned one page toward me.
It was a contract.
Bennett Strategic Holdings LLC.
Natalie owned forty percent.
Ryan owned sixty.
The next page was a purchase agreement for a house in Cherry Creek.
Price: $2.1 million.
Buyer: Bennett Strategic Holdings.
Closing date: January 3.
Two days away.
The earnest money had come from my stolen $875,000 transfer.
I looked at Natalie.
“You were buying a house with my money.”
“I didn’t know it was yours.”
“You didn’t ask where it came from?”
“He said it was from the sale of an investment.”
“And the fertility clinic?”
Natalie flinched.
“That’s why I came.”
I waited.
She pressed both hands flat on the table.
“There is no pregnancy.”
I stared at her.
“Brooke saw ultrasound photos.”
“They’re not mine.”
“Whose are they?”
Natalie looked directly at me.
“Yours.”
The room went still.
“That makes no sense.”
“They were copies of your scans.”
“Why would you have copies of my ultrasound?”
Natalie’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because Ryan brought them to the clinic.”
My attorney stopped turning pages.
“Why?”
Natalie’s voice dropped.
“He wanted the clinic to discuss whether embryos created with his sperm could be transferred to a surrogate on a timeline close to your pregnancy.”
I felt sick.
“What?”
“He said he wanted two children close in age.”
“With you?”
Natalie shook her head.
“No.”
“With me.”
The world tilted again.
“But you said there is no pregnancy.”
“There isn’t.”
“Then what happened?”
Natalie looked at the folder.
“I refused.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“At Grant and Diane’s house?”
“Yes.”
“And they knew?”
“All of it.”
My fingers went cold.
Natalie pushed another document toward me.
It was an email chain printed on paper.
The subject line was Custody Strategy.
Ryan had sent it to Grant.
Diane was copied.
The first paragraph began with four words.
Once Claire is discredited...
I could not finish reading.
Rebecca did.
Then she looked at me with an expression I had not seen from her before.
Alarm.
“Claire, we need to get you somewhere secure today.”
“Why?”
She turned the last page around.
Ryan had written a timeline.
January 1: incident documentation.
January 2: emergency psychiatric petition.
January 3: close Cherry Creek property.
January 5: initiate guardianship review of unborn child if counsel approves.
May you like
And beneath that, one final line.
If she refuses to cooperate, use hospital route.
