Chapter 8 - The Truth About Brooke’s Pregnancy
Two weeks after the court hearing, I was sitting in my Scottsdale office reviewing quarterly revenue reports when Marcus knocked and entered. He held an updated dossier from our private investigator.
"You're going to want to see this," Marcus said, placing a folder in front of me with a faint, cynical smirk. "Our investigator tracked down Brooke Vance in San Diego. She went to an obstetric clinic yesterday."
"Is she healthy?" I asked, genuinely concerned for the unborn child, regardless of how vile its parents were.
"She’s perfectly healthy," Marcus said. "And the medical records obtained through subpoena during our fraud cross-filing confirm something Trent definitely doesn't know."
I opened the folder. Attached was a certified laboratory report and medical intake summary from an upscale fertility clinic in Newport Beach.
Brooke was indeed eleven weeks pregnant. But the conception date and medical documentation listed a father who wasn't Trent. The named father on the private clinic paperwork was a forty-five-year-old real estate developer from Orange County whom Brooke had been seeing on weekends while Trent thought she was visiting her sister.
Trent wasn't even the father of the child he had used as a weapon to demand my house.
Brooke had simply needed a fall guy to cover her expenses while her wealthy, married California lover finalized his own divorce. When she realized Trent was completely broke and owned nothing, she had packed her bags and run straight back to California.
That afternoon, Marcus sent the certified medical intake records to Trent’s public defender as part of mandatory discovery in our ongoing civil suit.
According to a courthouse clerk who witnessed the exchange, Trent broke down in hysterical tears right in the middle of the legal library. He screamed until the bailiffs had to escort him outside into the courtyard.
He had destroyed his marriage, forfeited a life of immense luxury, alienated his entire network of friends, and dragged his elderly parents into a criminal indictment—all for a child that wasn't his, by a woman who viewed him as nothing more than an easily manipulated patsy.
Later that evening, Trent sent me an email from a new address. It was eighteen pages long, rambling, incoherent, filled with apologies, declarations of undying love, and descriptions of his own stupidity.
May you like
I didn't read past the first sentence. I clicked the cursor, dragged the message into the trash folder, and permanently emptied the bin.
Some people do not deserve closure. They deserve the silence they created.
