Chapter 4 - The Price of a Lie
The admission hung in the air, toxic and heavy.
“Lucas wouldn't help you out of the goodness of his heart,” Ethan said, his mind frantically working through the timeline. “He’s been bankrupt for two years. How much did you pay him to give you his sample?”
“Fifty thousand,” Madison whimpered, rocking the crying child.
Ethan let out a hollow, manic laugh. “You don't have fifty thousand dollars. Before you moved into my house, you were drowning in credit card debt. Where did you get the money?”
I felt a sudden, sickening drop in my stomach. The puzzle pieces were rearranging themselves, forming a picture much darker than a simple affair.
“The foundation,” I said.
Both of them snapped their attention to me.
During the divorce, the forensic accountant discovered that nearly seventy thousand dollars had been drained from my pediatric charity’s operating accounts. Ethan’s lawyers had used that missing money to publicly humiliate me, claiming my “mental instability” over my infertility had caused me to mismanage the funds. It was the leverage they used to force me to surrender control of the charity and walk away from our assets without a fight.
“You used my foundation’s money,” I said, stepping toward Madison, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You stole from sick children to pay Lucas to impregnate you.”
Madison couldn't look at me. “I was going to put it back! I just needed the trust fund to activate once the baby was born. But the audit happened too fast.”
I turned to Ethan. He was staring at the floor, his face devoid of color, but he wasn't looking at Madison with betrayal anymore. He was looking at her with sheer, absolute terror.
He knew about the money.
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“Ethan,” I said, the realization hitting me with the force of a freight train. “You signed the audit.”
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