The statement lay there in front of me.

Black ink on white paper, and just looking at it made my chest tighten.

It said I had drugged Finn three years ago, then used a pregnancy to force him into marriage.

It said that after the wedding I'd milked the child for money, greedy and never satisfied.

Not one word was true.

And yet it read like a crime the Hensons had drafted for me long ago.

I lifted my head and looked Finn dead in the eye.

"You really think I'd ruin my whole life just to marry you?"

Finn stared back, his eyes cold.

"The test report's sitting right there."

"Because of you, Phoebe had to leave the country! Marie, it's not that I never gave you a chance to explain. You just never could explain a thing."

That report from three years ago had been crushing me for three years.

It wasn't issued by the police. It came from a private testing lab the Hensons did business with.

The report said his blood sample showed traces of a drug.

And every step of the testing process had been handled by Linda, start to finish.

Back then I knelt on the floor and begged him to look at the original, just once. He threw the report in my face instead.

"You're still trying to deny it?"

That question. I still remembered every word.

Linda sat on the sofa, calmly blowing the foam off her tea.

"Sign it. Sign it and your father's old place stays standing."

She didn't even lift her eyelids.

"Otherwise, I have plenty of ways to turn it into collateral for someone else's debt."

She knew exactly where to cut.

That house was the only piece of my father I had left.

Dinner came around.

Linda deliberately told the staff not to set a place for me.

The Henson relatives took their seats one by one. I stood off to the side, and no one acknowledged me.

Someone covered her mouth and snickered.

"You can always tell when they're from some backwater town. First-rate at climbing into a man's bed. If it weren't for her, our Finn would've married into the Hardy family by now."

I dug my nails hard into my palm and swallowed the words.

Phoebe sighed and pulled a document out of her bag.

"Miss Swanson, this is a note from your gynecological records. I had someone look it up."

She arranged her face into something like concern.

"It says here, "suspected history of contact with non-fixed partners"."

"Your health is so fragile. I have to wonder if it isn't from the miscarriage at all, but something from before that already⋯⋯"

She didn't finish, but the meaning landed clearly enough.

Linda pounced.

"No wonder she couldn't even hold on to the baby!"

She slapped her chopsticks down on the table.

"Something that filthy at the root, of course whatever she carried came out a curse!"

Seeing her chance, Phoebe took out her phone and cast it to the living room television.

It was a video.

On the screen, Garry was supporting me into a hospital room. I had no strength left, and my forehead rested against his shoulder.

Phoebe had cut out the part where I'd just come off the operating table and couldn't stay on my feet.

She'd left only those few seconds, the ones most likely to spark people's imaginations.

Finn watched the clip, and his face turned ugly.

He walked up to me and dropped his voice.

"So you've been so set on divorce because of him?"

I looked at him, and suddenly I laughed.

"Finn, I'd just come out of surgery. I couldn't even stand."

"And all you saw was me leaning on someone for one second?"

He said nothing.

After dinner, I went upstairs to the study to get something.

I'd barely reached the door when Linda's sharp voice slipped through the gap left by the half-closed door.

Phoebe had put a voice message on speaker inside.

"Don't keep the original alcohol test at the old house. Tomorrow at the birthday party, make her read the statement to the end, and this whole thing gets nailed shut for good."

Something dropped in my chest.

The report from three years ago. There really was something wrong with it.

I dialed Garry.

"Garry, that report from the private lab three years ago. Can it still be reviewed now?"

Garry was quiet for a moment.

"If there's a seal number, a chain-of-custody record, or a retained sample number, we can check whether the process was tampered with."

I hung up and drew in a deep breath.

Back in the living room, Finn pressed a pen into my hand.

"Sign it, and I'll tell Mom to leave your father's house alone."

I pulled off the cap and wrote four words on the back of the page.

"Divorce agreement."

Finn's face went cold. He snatched the paper and tore it apart.

"Marie, you're going to regret this."

That night, I went back to my rented apartment.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

"If you want to know the truth about that test report, go to Spencer's birthday party tomorrow."

I stared at the words on the screen, my fingers tightening.

Spencer's birthday party was held at the old Henson residence.

A massive portrait of Spencer hung in the center of the living room, surrounded by piles of expensive toys.

One of them, a little blue plush bear, stood out like a wound.

It was the first gift I'd ever bought for my baby.

Now Phoebe's child clutched it in his arms.

Phoebe came toward me in a pure white couture gown, playing the part of the lady of the house.

「Miss Swanson, there are a lot of guests today. Please, don't make a scene. I'm begging you.」

She pitched her voice just loud enough for the cluster of society wives nearby to hear.

And just like that, I became the unhinged, vicious woman who might explode at any moment.

Linda rose from the head of the table, the confession in her hand.

「Before we cut the cake, read this aloud.」

She slapped the paper on the table, her tone glacial.

The words on it were vile. I was to admit that three years ago I'd drugged a man into bed and trapped him, driven Phoebe away, betrayed my marriage vows, and that the miscarriage was the result of my own filth and had nothing to do with Finn.

I looked at her, cold and unmoving, and didn't take it.

Finn walked over with a glass of wine, his voice low with warning.

「Read it, and I'll cancel the mortgage paperwork on the ancestral home right away.」

He thought I'd grovel for that house, the way I had for the past three years.

When Phoebe saw me holding my ground, she flicked a glance at the control booth.

Yesterday's edited video flashed up on the big screen.

In it, I was leaning against Garry's shoulder.

Right on cue, Phoebe let out a strangled sob.

「Finn, I never wanted to hurt Marie.」

「But Spencer is so little. I can't let him be frightened by a wicked woman.」

Linda jumped in at once, producing the forged copy of the medical record.

「A woman who sleeps around like you, there's no telling whose baby was in your belly!」

「And you still had the nerve to blame Finn for not paying to save the pregnancy?」

I turned to look at Finn.

He didn't say a single word in my defense. Instead he frowned and asked me,

「Marie, was that baby really mine? Do you have the guts to get it tested?」

That question shredded the last shred of hope I'd been holding.

My baby was dead, and he was still questioning whose it had been.

I picked up the confession, drew a deep breath, and began to read.

「I admit that three years ago……」

With every line, the snickering around me swelled a little louder.

When I reached 「I willingly admit the child had nothing to do with Finn,」 my throat went dry from the weakness after surgery and the storm of emotion, and I couldn't stop the coughing fit that tore out of me.

Finn's frown twisted tighter.

「Quit playing the victim. Keep reading.」

Just then, Deidre Dickerson, a servant of the old residence, saw how ashen I'd gone from coughing and hurried over with a glass of warm water.

「Madam, please, wet your throat.」 Deidre's face was full of concern.

With her back to the room, as she handed me the glass, she pressed half an old seal and a folded photocopy into my palm.

「Three years ago, Miss Hardy went into the mistress's study. The original was taken by the chauffeur.」 Deidre breathed the words almost too soft to hear, then withdrew in a hurry.

I gripped the still-warm slip of paper, my heart pounding.

Last year, Deidre's little grandson had fallen suddenly ill and needed surgery. Linda, disgusted that she walked around with a grieving face and called it bad luck, had wanted to throw her out of the Henson household.

I was the one who'd covered the surgery costs out of my own savings, and dug in until they let her stay.

I'd never imagined that kindness would become the trump card that turned my fortunes today.

I swallowed a mouthful of the warm water and closed my fist around the photocopy.

Seeing me pause, Phoebe's expression shifted. She deliberately let go of Spencer's hand, the one she'd been holding all along.

Spencer came barreling at me like a little cannonball.

「Bam!」

He slammed straight into the unhealed wound on my abdomen.

Pain sent me staggering back, and I knocked over the champagne tower beside me.

Glass shattered, and Phoebe screamed.

「Marie! You can't even tolerate a child?」

Finn instinctively stepped forward, gathering Phoebe and Spencer into his arms.

He didn't spare me so much as a glance.

Linda jabbed a finger at my face and screamed.

「That dead baby of yours was bad luck to begin with, and now you want to hurt a living child!」

That line severed the last of my patience with the Hensons.

I straightened up, and in front of everyone, I tore the confession to shreds.

I laid it all out: the photocopy Deidre had given me, the signed divorce agreement, the surgical records.

「Finn, as of today, I don't want you anymore.」

Everyone froze.

Byron came bursting through the front door, drenched in sweat and white as a sheet, having sprinted so fast he'd even lost his keycard.

「Mr. Henson! Something's gone very wrong!」

He had two rush reports clamped in his hands, and they trembled as he held them out to Finn.

「Mr. Henson, this is the paternity test you forced me to run earlier, the one you made me take your hair follicles to the hospital for so you could expose your wife in front of everyone! The hospital provided a legally sealed sample for comparison, but the result……」

Byron swallowed, his voice shaking.

「You and the miscarried baby have a biological father-and-son relationship.」

Finn stared at those four words, father and son, and his fingers spasmed.

Before he could get a word out, the phone in Byron's pocket rang again.

It was the accredited review agency.

Byron fumbled to put it on speaker.

「Mr. Henson, regarding that test from three years ago, we've just confirmed the comparison against the half of an old seal that was sent in.」

「The blood sample submitted back then was never yours at all.」