Chapter 8 - THE LIE ABOUT MY SON
For a second, I thought I had misheard him.
“What did you say?”
Caden looked ashamed.
“She told Marcus there are medical records proving Donovan was born through a surrogate and you hid it.”
“That’s insane.”
“I know.”
“I gave birth to him at St. Joseph’s. You were in the room.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you shut it down?”
He had no answer.
Priya obtained the custody filing that night.
Buried in the supporting declaration was the lie.
Bonnie claimed I had “longstanding instability connected to infertility treatment, surrogacy fraud, and obsessive attachment to a child not biologically mine.”
It was grotesque.
It was also strategically useful.
We requested hospital records, birth records, prenatal records, and my obstetrician’s affidavit.
Then Priya found something stranger.
The petition referenced a private psychological evaluation dated eight months earlier.
I had never had one.
The evaluator was listed as Dr. Stephen Marsh.
Priya searched the license database.
“No such psychologist is licensed in Arizona.”
“So it’s fake.”
“Looks that way.”
The next morning, Bonnie stood at the old house driveway giving an interview to a local family-lifestyle blogger.
I watched from across the street.
She cried on cue.
“My son is being financially abused,” she said. “Our grandson has been taken from his father by a wealthy woman who thinks money puts her above family.”
The clip spread quickly.
By lunch, strangers were calling me a monster online.
By two, one of my clients asked whether the “domestic situation” could affect our contract.
At three, my assistant entered my office carrying a padded envelope.
“No return address,” she said.
Inside was a flash drive and a handwritten note.
I plugged the drive into an isolated computer.
A video opened.
Bonnie was sitting in a restaurant booth with Marcus.
May you like
Across from them sat a third person.
My chief financial officer.
