Chapter 7 - Evelyn’s Ultimatum
I returned to my apartment at four that afternoon, carrying a bag of groceries. As I stepped onto the third-floor landing, I stopped.
My mother was standing outside my apartment door.
Evelyn Sterling looked as regal as ever in her cream-colored cashmere wrap and pearl earrings. But there was a frantic, brittle energy in her posture. Her phone was clutched in one gloved hand, buzzing incessantly with incoming messages that she repeatedly silenced.
"Claire," she said, her voice dropping the maternal honey and revealing the cold iron beneath. "Unlock your door. We need to speak."
I didn't move toward her. I stood five feet away, near the stairwell railing, keeping my purse open and my fingers resting on the record button of my encrypted phone.
"Say what you have to say here, Mother."
Evelyn’s lips curled in disgust. "Don't be ridiculous. The neighbors don't need to hear our private business. Ben has gone completely insane. He moved out of the house this morning, froze the family accounts, and his lawyers served Vanessa with divorce papers at noon. What did you say to him?"
"I told him the truth," I replied evenly. "I showed him the papers you forged."
Evelyn stepped toward me, her eyes flaring with cold fury. "Truth? You little ungrateful wretch! You think you’re so righteous with your little hospital job! Vanessa has a chance to secure generational wealth. Ben’s family trust is worth fifty million dollars, Claire! Fifty million! Do you know what happens if Vanessa doesn't present an heir to the Vance trustees by next month? The distribution shifts to Ben’s cousins in Boston. Vanessa gets nothing. Our family gets nothing!"
"So you decided to steal Daniel’s child to secure Vanessa’s allowance?"
"Daniel is dead!" Evelyn snarled, completely shedding any pretense of decency. Her voice echoed down the quiet hallway. "Daniel was a middle-school science teacher who left you with a stack of unpaid bills and a rented apartment! This baby has the blood of the Sterling family. She belongs in an estate, with private tutors and trust funds, not in this squalor! Vanessa was doing you a favor! We were going to give you a clean break! You could have met someone else, started over without a fatherless brat dragging you down!"
Hearing my mother refer to my unborn daughter as a "fatherless brat" extinguished the very last ember of daughterly obligation I had carried in my heart. The woman standing before me wasn't a mother. She was a hollow, narcissistic social climber who viewed human beings as negotiable instruments.
"You forged Dad’s name, Evelyn," I said, my voice dangerously calm.
"Your father was a coward who spent his life worrying about rules!" Evelyn spat. "He would have done whatever I told him to do, just like he always did. Now, you listen to me, Claire. You are going to call Ben right now. You are going to tell him you had a postpartum panic attack, that you made up those lies about the signatures, and that the surrogacy arrangement was entirely your idea. You will sign the release papers, or I will destroy you."
"Destroy me how?"
"I have already spoken to Dr. Morrison, the chairman of your hospital’s board," Evelyn said with a triumphant, venomous smile. "I told him you have been stealing patient records and harassing Vanessa out of jealousy. By tomorrow morning, you won't have a job, you won't have health insurance, and when you deliver that baby, Child Protective Services will be waiting in the recovery room to take her into state custody based on my formal unfit-mother report. You sign with Vanessa, or you lose that baby to the foster system. Those are your choices."
I looked at her for a long, silent moment.
"My choice," I said softly, "is that you leave my building before the police arrive."
Evelyn laughed, a shrill, arrogant sound. "The police? You think the police care about a family argument over a baby? You’re pathetic, Claire. You’ve always been second-best, and you will die second-best."
She turned and stalked down the stairs, the heels of her Italian leather boots clicking rhythmically against the concrete steps.
I pulled out my phone. The red recording indicator was still flashing. I hit *Save*, labeled the file **EVELYN_EXTORTION_CONFESSION**, and sent it directly to Marcus Vance and Detective Miller at the county prosecutor’s office.
Then, a sharp, sudden cramp seized my lower abdomen.
I gasped, dropping my grocery bag to the floor as an orange rolled across the welcome mat. A warm trickle ran down the inside of my thigh.
May you like
My water had broken. I was thirty-six weeks pregnant, and Maya was coming.
***
