The months slid by. Spring crept into Paris with shy blossoms on the trees.
Rain that turned the cobblestones slick and shining.
I went to work, made friends with my coworkers. Learned how to complain about the metro like a local.
In therapy, Simone and I talked about anger.
“I don’t want to be consumed by it,” I told her one day. “But I also don’t want to forgive them.”
“Not now. Maybe not ever.”
“Forgiveness is not a requirement for healing,” she said. “Sometimes, recognition is enough.”
“Naming what happened. Acknowledging it was wrong. Deciding what you will do with that knowledge.”
“What I want to do,” I admitted, “is burn their world down.”
“Revenge can be seductive,” she said. “It promises control.”
“But it often binds you to the very people you want to escape.”
“I don’t want to be bound to them,” I said. “I want them to know what they cost me.”
“And I want to walk away, knowing they finally see it too.”
“Then maybe,” she said, “we look for justice instead of revenge.”
“I want justice,” I decided. “With a side of consequences.”
She smiled. “That seems reasonable.”
The twins were born in April.
“They came early,” Marcus said. “A few complications, but everyone’s fine.”
“Two boys. Healthy.”
I sat at my small kitchen table, fingers curled around a mug of coffee gone cold.
“And?”
“And,” he said, “I got the samples. I’ll have results in forty-eight hours.”
The Truth Finally Revealed
Forty-eight hours later, my phone rang while I was in the produce aisle examining tomatoes.
“It’s confirmed,” Marcus said. “Derek is not the father of those twins.”
I sagged against the cart. “You’re sure?”
“One hundred percent. The DNA comparison shows no match to Derek’s markers.”
“The babies are a perfect match to Victor Chin, though.”
I paced between the apples and oranges. “Does Derek know?”
“Not yet,” Marcus said. “But you’ll want to hear this.”
“I kept digging. Eleanor’s been paying a private investigator of her own for the last year.”
“She knows about Amber and Victor.”
“Since when?”
“Before the baby shower. Before she handed you the check.”
“At least six months before the boys were born.”
“She knew.” The words came out flat.
“She knew,” Marcus confirmed. “And she went ahead and presented those twins as Mitchell heirs anyway.”
I paced. “Why?”
“Because,” Marcus said, “your ex-husband’s fertility issues go deeper than you were told.”
My stomach tightened. “What does that mean?”
“Derek had a serious illness as a kid. High fevers, complications.”
“One of the side effects is a high likelihood of sterility.”
A cold wave washed over me. “Eleanor knew that?”
“For decades. The doctors told her his chances of fathering children were low. Very low.”
“She still pushed us through years of fertility treatments knowing that.”
“Looks like it. Maybe she hoped the doctors were wrong.”
“Or maybe,” he said, voice dry, “she just liked having someone to blame.”
The Family Trust Secret
“That’s why she fixated on my failure,” I whispered. “Why she was so vicious.”
“If Derek was sterile, that meant the problem was her bloodline, not mine.”
“Easier to point the finger at me.”
“Exactly. So when Amber turns up pregnant, it’s Eleanor’s miracle.”
“She doesn’t care whose DNA is actually involved, as long as she gets babies.”
“What about the family trust?” I asked suddenly.
“That,” Marcus said, “is where it gets fun.”
The Mitchell family trust had been set up by Derek’s great-grandfather.
One of the ironclad clauses: control of the trust could only pass to a direct biological heir bearing the Mitchell name.
If no biological heirs were produced, control would pass sideways to the next eligible branch.
“In your case,” Marcus said, “if Derek can’t produce biological children, and if those twins aren’t his, control of the trust goes to a cousin named Harold Mitchell in Tulsa.”
I almost dropped my phone. “Harold? The one Derek calls Cousin Chainsaw?”
“The very same. And from what I can see, Harold and Eleanor despise each other.”
“So if it comes out that the boys aren’t Derek’s…”
“Eleanor loses control of the trust,” Marcus said. “The money. The houses.”
“The company. Everything. It all goes to Harold.”
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
“Send me everything,” I said. “Every photo, every lab result, every financial record.”
“I want copies of it all.”
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