Chapter 3 - The Ultrasound Lie
The rain finally broke over downtown Dallas, turning the foul residue on Grant’s lapels into a dilute, rancid run that soaked straight through to his skin.
Inside the idling Bentley, the smell was unbearable. The leather upholstery, usually fragrant with cedar and expensive hide, was ruined. Lauren was curled against the passenger side, her knees pulled tight against the dashboard, clutching her tiny satin purse as if it were a life raft. Outside, the flashbulbs of half a dozen persistent paparazzi bounced off the tinted glass like strobe lights.
"Get them away from the car," Lauren hissed, her breath fogging the window. "Grant, call someone! Call your driver, call the police! Look at what they’re writing online! It’s all over Twitter already!"
Grant didn’t answer. His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles had gone completely white, the veins in his forearms bulging against his soaked cuffs. His phone buzzed continuously against the center console. Every two seconds, another notification popped up on the illuminated screen:
URGENT: Apex Bank has placed an administrative freeze on Holloway Development Op-Account.
CALL BACK: Board Member Vance – 'What the hell happened at the Crescent?'
MISSED CALL: Texas Commerce Syndicate (4)
NOTIFICATION: Wire Transfer #4091 of $850,000 to Highland Park Escrow REVERSED.
"Grant!" Lauren’s voice rose to a shrill shriek, her fingers digging through his wet sleeve. "Listen to me! We have to go to the hospital! The stress... I’m cramping, Grant! The baby! If anything happens to our son, she’s going to pay for this! We can sue her for assault! We can put her in jail!"
Grant turned his head slowly. The look in his eyes wasn't the warm, besotted gaze he usually gave her across private dining tables at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. It was hollowed out, cold, and edged with sharp, predatory panic.
"Shut up, Lauren," he muttered.
Lauren blinked, her mouth falling open. "What did you say to me?"
"I said shut up!" Grant roared, slamming his palm against the leather steering wheel. The car horn let out a short, blaring bark that made the photographers jump on the curb. "Do you have any idea what just happened out there? Do you have any concept of what eighty-five million dollars means? That deal was my lifeline! Without the Whitmore guarantee, every creditor in Texas will call their paper by eight o’clock tomorrow morning!"
"You said it was your company!" Lauren cried, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her cheeks. "You said you brought her into high society! You told me she was an orphan who sat at home eating your money while you did all the real work!"
"She is an orphan!" Grant shouted back, his chest heaving under the wet linen of his shirt. "She never touched the accounts! For five years, she signed whatever proxy forms I put in front of her! She spent her afternoons planting hydrangeas and donating to animal shelters! She didn't care about the logistics lines! She didn't care about the board!"
"Then why did the hotel manager call her Whitmore?" Lauren demanded. "Why did the lawyer have those papers ready? She played you, Grant! She’s been setting this up for months while you were in bed with me!"
The word hung between them, sour and heavy.
Grant shoved the Bentley into gear, the tires squealing as he whipped the heavy vehicle past the velvet ropes, splashing dirty curb water back onto the journalists who scattered out of his path. He sped through the red light onto Harwood Street, his eyes darting frantically between the rearview mirror and his dashboard screen.
He needed leverage. He needed an angle that would force the public narrative back in his favor before the financial markets opened in New York. If Natalie was going to play the scorned, vindictive heiress, he had to play the persecuted patriarch protecting his unborn child. The press loved a betrayed wife, but they loved a defenseless, endangered pregnant woman even more.
"Where are we going?" Lauren asked, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist.
"Parkland Memorial," Grant said, his tone tightening as a cold, calculating scheme began to take shape. "We’re going to the emergency intake. We’re getting you examined. You’re going to tell the intake nurse that the bucket hit your stomach. You're going to tell them you're feeling sharp abdominal pain. We’ll file a police report for felony assault on an unborn child before midnight."
Lauren’s eyes flickered. For a split second, a look of pure panic—entirely different from the shock at the hotel—crossed her features. She pulled her purse tighter against her chest.
"No," she said quickly. "No Parkland. Let's go to Dr. Albright’s clinic in Plano. He’s my private doctor."
"Plano is forty minutes north, Lauren! Parkland is five minutes away," Grant barked, blowing through another amber light on Oak Lawn Avenue. "We need an official Dallas County medical record right now. The police won’t take a private clinic report from your personal doctor as seriously for an immediate arrest warrant. I’m having my PR team draft the statement from the waiting room: 'Billionaire’s Pregnant Fiancée Hospitalized After Brutal Ambush by Vengeful Ex.' It flips the board. It buys us forty-eight hours with the syndicate."
"Grant, wait—please!" Lauren pleaded, her voice cracking with genuine terror now. "I... I don't need an ultrasound right now. I just need to lie down. Take me to my apartment. Please, just take me to Turtle Creek!"
Grant ignored her, swerving the heavy sedan into the ambulance bay of the emergency trauma pavilion. He killed the engine, pushed open his door, and rushed around to yank Lauren’s door open. "Get out. Walk slow. Look pale. Lean on me."
Before she could protest, Grant half-dragged her through the automatic sliding doors into the bright, sterile fluorescents of the intake lobby. The two of them looked grotesque—drenched in foul-smelling street water, Lauren’s silver gown ruined, Grant’s tuxedo clinging like a wet shroud.
Within minutes, the triage nurse, alarmed by the smell and the woman weeping hysterically about pregnancy trauma, hurried them into an examination room in Area C.
"Name?" the attending physician asked, stepping into the curtained cubicle with a chart. He paused, crinkling his nose at the odor. "What happened to you two?"
"An assault," Grant said smoothly, stepping forward and pulling out his wallet to show his platinum insurance card—forgetting for a fraction of a second that the Whitmore name underpinned it. "My fiancée is eight weeks pregnant. She was struck by a heavy object and industrial wastewater outside the Crescent Hotel. She is experiencing severe acute abdominal stress. We need a full ultrasound immediately and an official police incident log."
Lauren sat on the edge of the examination bed, her knuckles bloodless as she clutched her handbag. Her face had drained of whatever color remained.
"All right," the doctor said cautiously, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. "Let’s get her into a gown and get the portable sonogram in here right away to check fetal heart tones."
"I... I want to wait for my own doctor," Lauren whispered, shrinking back against the paper lining of the gurney.
"Ma'am, if you're experiencing trauma-induced cramping at eight weeks, we cannot wait," the doctor said firmly. He waved a nurse forward, who pulled the curtain shut and prepped the ultrasound wand, squeezing a generous blob of cold blue gel onto the monitor tray.
Grant stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, watching the screen. In his mind, he was already calculating the headlines. The Whitmore Heiress Charged with Attempted Manslaughter. It would neutralize her. The board would be forced to freeze her voting rights under the company's moral turpitude clause. He could force a settlement. He could force her to restore the $85 million bridge loan.
"Lie back, please," the nurse instructed gently.
Lauren didn't move. She began to shake uncontrollably.
"Lauren, lie back," Grant said, his voice dropping into an authoritative command. "Let them do the scan."
"Grant... don't do this," she whimpered, looking at him with wide, horrified eyes.
"Lie back!"
Trembling, Lauren reclined onto the gurney. The doctor spread the cold conductive gel across her lower abdomen and pressed the transducer wand against her skin. The black-and-white screen flickered to life, showing the grainy, dark cross-section of pelvic tissue.
The doctor moved the wand methodically, his brows furrowing as he adjusted the gain on the console. He tapped the trackball, measuring fluid pockets, shifting the angle. Thirty seconds passed in dead silence, broken only by the rhythmic hum of the machine.
"Doctor?" Grant prompted, leaning in closer to the monitor. "Where is the gestational sac? Where’s the heartbeat?"
The doctor didn't answer right away. He moved the wand again, pressing deeper, checking both ovaries and the uterine cavity. Finally, he lifted the wand, picked up a towel to wipe Lauren’s skin, and stripped off his latex gloves with a sharp snap.
"Mr. Holloway, is this some kind of sick joke?" the doctor asked, his voice flat and unimpressed.
Grant froze. "What?"
"There is no gestational sac. There is no fetus. There has never been an implantation in this uterine wall," the doctor said, turning his clipboard toward them. "Your companion is not pregnant. Not eight weeks, not eight days. In fact, her uterine lining shows she finished a standard menstrual cycle less than a week ago."
Grant’s mind went blank. The sterile room seemed to tilt sideways.
He turned his gaze slowly toward Lauren.
She was sitting on the examination table, her hands covering her face, weeping silently into her palms.
"Lauren?" Grant’s voice came out in a dry, cracked whisper. "What did he just say?"
Lauren wouldn't look at him. She reached into her satin purse with shaking fingers, pulled out a small, laminated paper printout, and dropped it onto the floor between them.
It was an ultrasound image. But at the bottom left corner, printed in tiny, high-resolution text that Grant had never bothered to read when she had proudly handed it to him in a restaurant booth three weeks ago, was a watermark:
Stock Template #8841 – Medical Graphics Inc. / For Novelty Use Only.
"You..." Grant stepped forward, his fists shaking with a sudden, violent rage. "You lied to me? You told me you were carrying my heir! I bought you an eighteen-thousand-dollar diamond! I brought you to the Crescent Grand on the biggest night of my life!"
Before Lauren could speak, the curtain was pulled sharply back.
Standing in the doorway of the examination cubicle wasn't an orderly or a nurse.
It was Daniel Reed.
Behind the attorney stood two uniformed officers from the Dallas Police Department, their badges gleaming under the fluorescent lights, along with a process server holding a thick stack of blue-backed legal documents.
"Good evening, Grant," Daniel said, his voice entirely devoid of warmth. "We anticipated you might attempt to manufacture a medical narrative this evening. Ms. Whitmore took the liberty of having Dr. Albright’s clinic subpoenaed two hours ago. We already had her true medical records before you even parked the car."
Daniel took a step into the room, gesturing to the process server.
"Grant Holloway, you are hereby served with a petition for immediate marital dissolution, an emergency restraining order barring you from the Preston Hollow estate, and an ex parte asset freeze covering all domestic and international accounts."
May you like
Daniel turned his eyes to Lauren, who was cowering against the pillows.
"And as for you, Ms. Price," Daniel added, his tone ice-cold. "You are formally named as a co-conspirator in a civil fraud suit for corporate embezzlement totaling four hundred and sixteen thousand dollars. The car outside has been impounded. I suggest you both call a cab. If you have the cash to pay for one."
