Chapter 5 - The Court Order
I thought I had misheard him.
“A court order?”
Luka took the tablet from the guard.
“Fake.”
“How do you know?”
“Because family courts don’t issue emergency custody orders in six hours without a hearing unless there’s an immediate safety allegation.”
My stomach twisted.
“What allegation?”
Luka looked at the document again.
Then his jaw hardened.
“Postpartum psychological instability.”
I stared at him.
Derek had told the court I was mentally unstable.
“He planned this.”
“Yes.”
The words hurt more because I knew they were true.
Derek had not made an emotional decision at the hospital.
He had prepared paperwork.
He had prepared DNA results.
He had prepared a story in which I became the dangerous mother.
Luka contacted an attorney.
Her name was Rebecca Stone.
She arrived before sunrise carrying two laptops and enough anger for all of us.
“The filing exists,” she said.
“So it’s real?”
“The application is real.”
She looked at me.
“The order is not.”
Derek had printed a proposed order as though a judge had already approved it.
Rebecca smiled without humor.
“That was stupid.”
I looked toward the gates.
Derek and Camille were still outside.
“What do we do?”
“We document everything.”
Luka turned on the intercom.
“Derek.”
My husband looked toward the camera.
“Send my wife outside.”
“She’s not your property.”
“She is carrying my child.”
The hypocrisy almost made me laugh.
Six hours earlier, Isla had supposedly not been his.
Now she was suddenly his child again.
Luka must have noticed the same contradiction.
“I thought your DNA report said otherwise.”
Derek’s face changed.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
Camille touched his arm.
He recovered.
“Elena committed fraud.”
I stepped toward the microphone.
“No, Derek.”
His eyes widened when he heard me.
“You filed a false report before I even gave birth.”
“Elena, you’re confused.”
“No.”
I felt stronger with every word.
“I’m finally not confused.”
Camille leaned toward the intercom.
“You should listen to your husband.”
I almost smiled.
“You mean my husband who left the hospital holding your hand?”
Silence.
Rebecca recorded everything.
Derek eventually left.
But before he did, Camille looked directly into the security camera.
She smiled.
That smile bothered me.
An hour later, Rebecca received an email.
Attached was a copy of my father’s will.
One page had been highlighted.
A trust I had never heard of would transfer to me upon the birth of my first biological child.
Its estimated value was more than two hundred million dollars.
I stared at the number.
Rebecca looked at Luka.
“You knew about this?”
“Yes.”
I felt betrayed again.
“How long?”
“Since your father died.”
I stepped away from him.
“You knew I inherited two hundred million dollars and said nothing?”
“It wasn’t active.”
“It is now.”
Luka’s silence answered me.
I looked at Isla.
Suddenly everything changed.
May you like
Derek had not come back because he loved his daughter.
He had come back because she had made me rich.
