Chapter 2 - The Money That VanishedNatalie hit the stone terrace before anyone could catch her.
Then she smiled at me.
Not nervously.
Not apologetically.
She smiled like she had just won something.
Three hundred guests went silent beneath the strings of white lights hanging over the garden terrace of the Bellamy Estate outside Charleston.
My mother’s champagne glass slipped from her fingers.
It shattered beside her chair.
My father stood so quickly his table shook.
And my husband, Eric?
He went white.
Natalie rested one hand over the obvious curve beneath her orange silk dress and lifted the microphone again.
“I know this is shocking,” she said. “But Eric and I are in love.”
Someone gasped.
A chair scraped against stone.
I heard my aunt whisper, “Oh my God.”
I didn’t move.
That was what confused Natalie first.
She had expected tears.
Maybe screaming.
Probably a slap.
Instead, I stood beside our anniversary cake wearing the emerald dress Eric had told me made my eyes look beautiful and watched the sister I had protected my entire life destroy herself in public.
Natalie’s smile tightened.
“Claire?” she said.
I picked up my champagne glass.
Took one small sip.
Then placed it down.
“You’re finished?”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Finished?”
“With your announcement.”
Eric finally moved.
“Claire, I can explain.”
I looked at him.
Ten years of marriage.
Ten years of birthdays, mortgages, vacations, funerals, Sunday breakfasts, fights over laundry, whispered promises in dark bedrooms, and plans for a future I once believed belonged to both of us.
Four months earlier, I would have begged for that explanation.
Tonight, I didn’t need one.
Natalie gave a brittle laugh.
“You’re acting like you don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand.”
She stepped down from the small platform.
“I’m having Eric’s child.”
My mother covered her mouth.
Dad looked ready to cross the terrace and drag Eric through a wall.
But I raised one hand.
Dad stopped.
Natalie noticed.
For the first time, uncertainty flickered across her face.
I turned toward the back of the garden.
“Mr. Miller?”
A man in a charcoal suit rose from table twenty-seven.
Grant Miller was sixty-two, silver-haired, broad-shouldered, and almost aggressively ordinary-looking.
That was why he had spent thirty years as one of the best private investigators in South Carolina.
People forgot he was there.
Natalie watched him approach.
“Who is that?”
“Someone I hired.”
Eric’s head snapped toward me.
“You hired someone?”
Grant carried a red leather folder.
Natalie’s fingers tightened around the microphone.
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
The color left Eric’s face.
Grant stopped beside me and placed the folder on the cake table.
The band had stopped playing.
Even the servers were frozen.
I opened the folder.
Inside were photographs.
Hotel receipts.
Phone records.
Bank transfers.
And one laboratory report.
Natalie stared at the first photograph.
It showed her kissing my husband outside the Charleston Harbor Hotel.
She swallowed.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“For four months?”
“Yes.”
Eric stepped toward me.
“Claire—”
“Stay where you are.”
He did.
That surprised everyone.
Maybe even him.
Natalie’s confidence began to crack.
“So what?” she said. “You know. Everyone knows now. Eric loves me.”
“Does he?”
Eric looked down.
Natalie spun toward him.
“Eric?”
I removed the laboratory report.
The paper made almost no sound.
But somehow, in that silent garden, it felt like thunder.
Natalie laughed nervously.
“What is that?”
“A prenatal paternity report.”
Her face changed.
Eric stared at me.
“What?”
Natalie shook her head.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
I unfolded the report.
“It’s extremely possible.”
She stepped toward me.
“Where did you get that?”
“You left your medical portal logged in on Mom’s tablet during your visit in April.”
Mom slowly lowered her hand from her mouth.
I continued.
“The clinic had already run a noninvasive prenatal paternity test.”
Natalie’s lips parted.
“You had no right—”
“You used my husband as a baby announcement at my anniversary party. I think we’ve passed the point where you get to lecture me about boundaries.”
A few guests murmured.
Natalie looked at Eric.
Then back at me.
I held up the report.
“Eric is not the father.”
Silence.
Pure, absolute silence.
Natalie blinked.
Once.
Twice.
“That’s a lie.”
“The laboratory disagrees.”
Eric grabbed the edge of a chair.
“You told me you were sure.”
“I am sure!”
“No,” I said. “You weren’t.”
Natalie rushed toward me.
I stepped aside.
Grant moved between us.
She stopped.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Then who is?”
That was the question I had spent four months deciding whether to answer publicly.
I looked past her.
Toward table twelve.
A man in a navy tuxedo had stopped breathing.
Forty-one.
Married.
Two children.
And currently running for the state senate.
Natalie followed my gaze.
Her face collapsed.
“No.”
Eric turned slowly.
The man at table twelve stood.
His wife stared up at him.
“What is happening, Jonathan?”
Natalie whispered, “Please.”
I looked at my sister.
“You wanted everyone to know the truth.”
Jonathan Mercer’s wife rose from her chair.
Her voice shook.
“Natalie?”
Natalie backed away.
I handed the microphone to Grant.
Then I closed the red folder.
“You should probably tell them the rest yourself.”
And that was when my sister fainted.
But the most dangerous secret in that folder wasn’t the DNA test.
It was the bank transfer Eric had made three days earlier.
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
From our joint investment account.
May you like
To a corporation I had never heard of.
And according to Grant, my sister wasn’t the only person my husband had been betraying.
Related Stories
