Chapter 6
The word hung in the air.
Baby.
Seven months.
Definitely his.
I felt the room spin.
Arthur’s face was grim.
“We need to verify this,” he said. “Immediately. It could be another lie. Another manipulation. She knows Jackson’s weakness. She knows he’d do almost anything for a child. Especially a child of his.”
Jackson was staring at the wall.
“Seven months,” he repeated. “That would mean she got pregnant right around the engagement. She… she told me she was on birth control. She said we’d wait until after the wedding. Until we were settled.”
He looked at me.
“What if it’s true, Mom? What if there’s a baby?”
“Then we handle it,” I said. “Whatever the truth is, we handle it together. But we don’t make decisions based on a phone call from a jail cell. We get proof. We get a DNA test. We know for certain before we let her back into our heads.”
But it was too late for that.
She was already back in.
The seed was planted.
And I knew my son.
I knew that even if there was only a one percent chance the baby was real, he would spend every waking moment thinking about it.
That was the genius of her move.
It didn’t matter if the baby was his.
It didn’t even matter if there was a baby at all.
What mattered was the doubt.
The what-if.
The possibility that he might be abandoning his own child.
Natalie had played this perfectly.
From inside a jail cell, with no money, no phone, no resources, she had still found a way to control us.
The DNA test was ordered the next morning.
Natalie agreed without argument.
She was too agreeable.
Too calm.
That should have been our first warning.
The results took five days.
Five days of hell.
Jackson didn’t sleep.
He didn’t eat.
He paced the house from morning until night.
He researched custody laws.
He looked at houses with extra bedrooms.
He imagined a life he hadn’t planned for.
And every time I saw him holding one of Frank’s old baby sweaters, my heart broke a little more.
Because I knew.
I knew in my bones that this was another lie.
But I couldn’t prove it.
Not yet.
The results came on a Tuesday.
Arthur called.
His voice was strange.
“You need to come to my office,” he said. “Now. And bring Jackson. And Judith. We’re going to need Judith.”
We arrived twenty minutes later.
Arthur’s office was on the top floor of the tallest building downtown.
He met us at the door.
His face was ashen.
“What is it?” Jackson demanded. “Just tell us. Is it mine?”
“Sit down,” Arthur said.
We sat.
He laid the DNA report on the table between us.
“The baby is real,” he said.
Jackson exhaled.
He closed his eyes.
“And?” he asked.
“And,” Arthur said, “the baby is not yours, Jackson.”
Jackson’s eyes flew open.
“What?”
“The DNA is conclusive,” Arthur said. “Zero percent chance of paternity. The father is Marcus Webb. Her husband.”
Jackson stared at the report.
He read it once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then he laughed.
A sharp, bitter sound.
“Of course it is,” he said. “Of course. She used me. She used my money. She used my name. And when she needed a baby to seal the deal, she went to her real husband. The whole time. The entire three years. I was just the wallet. Marcus was the man she actually slept with.”
He stood.
He paced the office.
“I should be relieved,” he said. “I should be happy there’s no baby. No tie to her. No reason to ever see her again. So why do I feel like I’ve lost something?”
“Because you wanted it to be real,” I said softly. “You wanted the family. The wife. The child. Even after everything, you still wanted the dream she sold you.”
He nodded.
He looked at Arthur.
“Okay,” he said. “So she lied. Again. What now? We give this to the DA. We add paternity fraud to the list of charges. She gets more time. We move on.”
Arthur didn’t answer.
He looked uncomfortable.
“Arthur,” I said. “What aren’t you telling us?”
He sighed.
He opened another file.
“Natalie’s attorney filed a motion this morning,” he said. “He’s requesting a bail hearing. And he’s got a new argument.”
“Argument for what?” Judith asked.
“For why Natalie should be released,” Arthur said. “He’s claiming that the entire Westbrook fortune was built on fraud. That Frank Westbrook stole the original business idea from his partner back in 1987. That the partner was murdered to keep him quiet. And that Natalie was actually working with the partner’s surviving family to ‘recover what was stolen.’”
The room went silent.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Frank built that company from his garage. He had no partner. The only people who worked with him in the beginning were me and a kid from down the street who answered the phones.”
“I know,” Arthur said. “And the DA knows. But here’s the problem. Natalie has documents. Or at least, she claims she has documents. Wills. Letters. A sworn affidavit from a man who says he was there the night the partner was killed. None of it is real, I’m sure of it. But it’s enough to get the press interested. Enough to get a judge to consider bail. Enough to drag this out for years.”
He leaned forward.
“She’s not trying to win in court,” he said. “She’s trying to win in the court of public opinion. She’s going to paint herself as a modern-day Robin Hood. A brave woman who took on the evil rich family and got railroaded for it. And with the baby angle—even if it’s not Jackson’s—she’ll play the sympathetic pregnant woman. Judges are human. They see a pregnant woman in an orange jumpsuit, they start thinking about mercy.”
I stood.
I walked to the window.
The city spread out below me.
Our company’s headquarters was three blocks away.
The building Frank had built with his own hands.
The legacy he had died protecting.
And now a woman who had never worked an honest day in her life was going to try to burn it all to the ground.
Because she had nothing left to lose.
“Let her try,” I said.
I turned back to the room.
My voice was steady.
Cold.
“Frank Westbrook was the best man I ever knew,” I said. “He built that company fair and square. He treated every employee like family. He gave away more money in his lifetime than most countries spend on healthcare. And I will not let a convicted felon and her con-artist husband drag his name through the mud for five minutes of cable news fame.”
I looked at Arthur.
“Fight the bail motion,” I said. “Use every resource we have. Bring in the best forensic accountants. The best historians. The best investigators. Prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that Frank’s business was legitimate. That there was no partner. No murder. No cover-up. And then leak Natalie’s record to the press. Every con. Every mark. Every divorce. Let the public see who the real criminal is here.”
I looked at Jackson.
“And you,” I said. “You’re going to hold a press conference.”
“Mom, I don’t think—”
“You’re going to stand in front of every camera in this city,” I said. “And you’re going to tell the truth. All of it. The head-shaving. The drugging. The three years of lies. The secret husband. The fake baby. You’re going to show the world exactly who Natalie Carter is. And you’re going to do it before she gets a chance to tell her version.”
Jackson stood a little straighter.
I saw the resolve harden in his eyes.
“Okay,” he said. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “Nine o’clock. On the steps of City Hall. No lawyers. No scripts. Just the truth.”
Judith smiled.
“That’s my girl,” she said.
The next morning, we arrived at City Hall to find a sea of cameras.
Word had leaked.
Natalie’s attorney had given an interview to every network that would listen.
*“Natalie Carter is a political prisoner,”* he had said. “The Westbrook family has the police, the courts, and the media in their pocket. They will do anything to silence anyone who threatens their empire.”
The crowd was mixed.
Some held signs supporting us.
**JUSTICE FOR ELEANOR.**
**NATALIE IS A MONSTER.**
Others held signs supporting her.
**FREE NATALIE.**
**WESTBROOKS = MURDERERS.**
Jackson walked up the steps alone.
I watched from the side.
Judith held my hand.
He stood at the podium.
He adjusted the microphone.
And he spoke.
For forty minutes.
No notes.
No hesitation.
He told them everything.
From the first night he met Natalie at the gala.
To the first time she made him choose between her and his mother.
To the rehearsal dinner conversation he had overheard.
To waking up to find his mother bald and broken.
To the files in her apartment.
The timeline.
The secret husband.
The fake baby.
He didn’t leave anything out.
He didn’t make himself look good.
He admitted he had been stupid.
He admitted he had been blind.
He admitted he had chosen a lie over the woman who had given him life.
And when he was finished, the crowd was silent.
Then someone started clapping.
Then another.
Then the whole crowd was on their feet.
Jackson walked down the steps toward me.
The reporters shouted questions.
He ignored them all.
He reached me.
He took my hand.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
We got into the car.
We had just pulled away when Arthur called.
“Turn on the radio,” he said. “Right now.”
Jackson turned it on.
A breaking news bulletin.
*“Natalie Carter, the woman at the center of the Westbrook wedding scandal, has been released on bail this morning. Judge Thomas Miller cited ‘insufficient evidence of flight risk’ and ‘the defendant’s advanced pregnancy’ in his ruling. Carter walked out of the downtown jail just ten minutes ago, accompanied by her attorney and her husband, Marcus Webb.”*
Jackson slammed his fist on the dashboard.
“How?” he shouted. “How could they let her out? After everything? The DNA results—”
“Miller’s wife sits on the board of the charity Natalie used to run,” Arthur said. “I’m looking into it. But it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that she’s out. And she’s not going to hide. She’s going to come for you. Both of you. Hard. And she’s got nothing left to lose.”
I looked out the window.
Somewhere in this city, Natalie was free.
She was with her husband.
She was pregnant.
And she was planning our destruction.
I closed my eyes.
I took a deep breath.
“Okay,” I said. “If that’s how she wants to play it… fine.”
May you like
I opened my eyes.
“War it is.”
