Chapter 8 - The Mistress Changes Sides
Natalie requested to speak with me the following morning.
Her attorney contacted Marian and claimed Natalie possessed evidence that could prove Dominic and Samuel conspired to harm me.
Marian advised against meeting her.
“She has lied repeatedly,” she said. “Anything she tells you should go through investigators.”
“I want to see her face.”
“Audrey—”
“She stood beside my hospital bed wearing my coat. She watched Dominic call my children runts. I need to know whether she regrets what she did or only regrets losing.”
Grandfather did not interfere.
A guarded meeting was arranged in a hospital administrative suite.
Natalie entered wearing a loose gray sweater and maternity trousers. Without the red dress, cashmere coat, and satisfied smile, she looked younger.
More frightened.
She sat across from me.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then she said, “I didn’t know they would try to kill you.”
“But you knew there was a plan.”
“Yes.”
“How much did Dominic pay you?”
Her cheeks reddened.
“Two hundred thousand dollars initially.”
“For what?”
“To meet him publicly. To create photographs. To make you believe he was having an affair.”
I stared at her.
“You were pretending?”
“At first.”
“Why?”
“Dominic wanted you emotionally unstable before the delivery. He said stress would make you easier to control.”
The cruelty was almost clinical.
Natalie continued.
“He told me you were a spoiled heiress who controlled him financially. He said the marriage was an arrangement and you refused to release money that legally belonged to him.”
“And you believed that?”
“I wanted to.”
“Because he was paying you.”
“Yes.”
At least she did not pretend innocence.
“When did the relationship become real?”
“About eight months ago.”
I had been four months pregnant.
“He told me he loved me,” she said. “He said after the twins were born, he would divorce you and we would leave the country.”
“With my children’s money.”
“I thought it came from a trust he helped create.”
“You knew I didn’t know about it.”
She looked down.
“Yes.”
“And the coat?”
Tears appeared in her eyes.
“He gave it to me that morning. I knew it was yours.”
“Why wear it?”
“Because I hated you.”
The honesty surprised me again.
“You didn’t know me.”
“I hated what you represented.”
“What did I represent?”
“Everything I thought I deserved.”
Natalie’s father, Samuel, had raised her to believe the Sterling family destroyed his career. He told her Grandfather stole Westbridge, discredited his research, and left their family struggling.
When Natalie was fourteen, Samuel began showing her photographs of me.
Private schools.
Vacations.
Charity galas.
“He said your mother ruined him and you inherited the reward,” she explained. “He said taking something from you would correct what your family did.”
“So you took my husband.”
“I thought I did.”
Her voice cracked.
“Now I understand he was using both of us.”
I felt no sympathy for her pain.
But I understood the humiliation of discovering Dominic’s version of love.
“What evidence do you have?”
Natalie opened her handbag slowly while a security officer watched.
She removed a small audio recorder.
“Dominic kept a second apartment under my name. He met Gordon and my father there. I started recording them after I learned he took you to Napa.”
“Because you were jealous.”
“Yes.”
“What did you record?”
“Plans for the delivery. The forged guardianship papers. The transfer of your father. Dominic discussing what would happen if you survived.”
Marian took the recorder.
“Why didn’t you give this to police immediately?”
“I was afraid.”
“You were arrested in a hospital,” Marian replied. “Fear should have arrived sooner.”
Natalie wiped her face.
“I also thought I could use it to make Dominic choose me.”
I nearly laughed at the tragedy of it.
Even while collecting evidence of conspiracy, she still imagined becoming his wife.
“Did you know my medication was altered?”
“I knew my father reviewed it. Dominic said the babies needed to be delivered before a board vote.”
“Did you ask whether it was safe?”
She did not answer.
“That means no.”
“I didn’t think—”
“No. You did think. You decided my safety mattered less than your future.”
She began crying.
I let her.
Tears were not accountability.
After a moment, she said, “There’s something else.”
“What?”
“My baby may not be Dominic’s.”
Marian stopped examining the recorder.
Natalie explained that Samuel pressured her to undergo fertility treatment through a private clinic. He wanted to guarantee her pregnancy aligned with mine.
She believed Dominic’s genetic material was used.
But several weeks earlier, she discovered the clinic records listed an anonymous donor code.
“You don’t know who the father is?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did Dominic know?”
“I confronted him. He said biology didn’t matter as long as the baby could be presented as a Hale heir.”
The plan was even more elaborate than I understood.
If something happened to Liam or Chloe, Natalie’s child could be used as a substitute claimant.
Samuel intended to create confusion around genetic records, guardianship, and inheritance.
My children were not the only infants treated as pieces on a board.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
Natalie pressed both hands over her stomach.
“Protection.”
“For yourself?”
“For my baby.”
“You brought forged guardianship papers into the NICU.”
“I know.”
“You stood beside the man trying to steal my children.”
“I know.”
“You mocked me while I was recovering from surgery.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke.
“I cannot change what I did. But my child didn’t do it.”
I looked through the glass wall toward the corridor leading to the NICU.
She was right about one thing.
Her unborn child was innocent.
That did not erase her responsibility.
But innocence did not become less valuable because it belonged to someone I hated.
“I will tell investigators you cooperated,” I said. “Nothing more.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me. Testify.”
She nodded.
The recordings transformed the investigation.
Dominic’s voice appeared in more than a dozen conversations.
In one, he instructed Gordon to create the false divorce settlement.
In another, he told Samuel to increase my medication gradually so doctors would attribute complications to pregnancy.
In the most disturbing recording, Evelyn discussed the twins.
“If Audrey dies, we need one child under each guardianship arrangement,” she said. “The court must not see a single controlling household.”
Samuel asked, “And if one infant doesn’t survive?”
Dominic replied, “Then Natalie’s child fills the gap.”
When prosecutors heard the audio, charges expanded to include conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping conspiracy, medical fraud, and organized financial crime.
Samuel remained silent.
Evelyn claimed the recordings were manipulated.
Gordon began negotiating against everyone.
Dominic continued insisting he was a victim of his mother’s influence.
Three days later, a family-court judge held an emergency hearing inside the hospital because I remained medically unable to travel.
Dominic appeared by video.
His attorney argued he should retain access to Liam and Chloe because no final conviction had occurred.
The judge watched the hospital recording.
Dominic’s voice filled the courtroom.
You and those little runts can figure life out without me.
Then the judge watched the footage of Evelyn entering the NICU.
She reviewed the forged guardianship papers and the medication records.
Dominic’s parental decision-making authority was suspended immediately. A permanent decision would follow the criminal trial.
The judge also invalidated the divorce settlement and granted me exclusive temporary control of marital assets.
For the first time, Dominic understood that emptying the accounts had not made me powerless.
It had created evidence.
After the hearing, my father asked to see me.
His memory remained fragmented, but he was improving.
He sat near the window wearing hospital clothes and holding the wooden music box.
“You found it,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Ellie was brave.”
“She was.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You survived sixteen years.”
“I forgot you.”
“You remembered my name.”
He looked toward the NICU photograph beside his bed.
“Those are your babies?”
“Liam and Chloe.”
He touched the image.
“Your mother wanted grandchildren.”
“I wish she could see them.”
He smiled faintly.
“Maybe she can.”
That evening, Chloe experienced another breathing crisis.
Doctors surrounded her incubator while I stood helplessly outside the treatment area.
The entire investigation disappeared from my mind.
Money did not matter.
The company did not matter.
Dominic did not matter.
Only Chloe.
After twenty terrifying minutes, the doctor stepped toward me.
“She’s stable.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Grandfather caught me.
The doctor explained that premature lungs often struggled unpredictably. Chloe might recover fully, but the weeks ahead would remain difficult.
I entered the NICU and placed my hand against the incubator.
“You don’t have to fight anyone’s war,” I whispered. “You just have to breathe.”
Behind me, Marian received a phone call.
Her expression shifted.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Sterling’s board has called an emergency vote.”
“To remove Grandfather?”
“Not only him.”
A coalition of directors planned to sell the hospital network to a private investment group before the criminal investigation damaged its value further.
The buyer’s identity was hidden behind multiple companies.
But one name appeared in the financing documents.
DHP International.
Dominic’s offshore company.
Even from jail, he was trying to seize the hospital network.
And according to the voting agreement, the sale would proceed in forty-eight hours unless someone holding my mother’s shares appeared before the board.
That someone was me.
I was weak, recovering from surgery, and unable to leave my premature twins.
Exactly as Dominic had planned.
May you like
But he had forgotten one thing.
Weakness and surrender were not the same.
