Chapter 3 - THE UNFINISHED NURSERY
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At midnight, the limousine delivered us back to our Fifth Avenue penthouse. The private elevator ride was suffocatingly quiet. Dominic checked his silver wristwatch, barely looking at me as the doors slid open into the marble foyer.
“I have international market calls until dawn, Clare,” Dominic said, stepping out toward his private wing. “Don’t wait up for me. Take your vitamins and sleep.”
“I will,” I said quietly.
The moment his study door clicked shut, I moved. I didn't head to our master bedroom. Instead, I walked silently down the carpeted hallway into the unfinished nursery. The room was decorated in soft cream and gray tones, filled with plush stuffed animals, a white wooden crib, and a hand-painted mural of the ocean.
I sat down on the armchair beside the window, pulled my laptop onto my lap, and opened an encrypted browser window.
Dominic was meticulously organized, but he was also arrogant. He believed I had forgotten the old shared cloud storage account we used when we were first renovating the penthouse three years ago.
I logged in using my old credentials.
There, hidden deep inside a subfolder labeled BUILDING INSURANCE, sat a collection of newly created PDF documents.
My fingers shook as I clicked on the first file. It was a formal legal petition for emergency custody and court-ordered psychological evaluation, drafted by his personal attorney, Charles Vane.
The petition claimed that I was suffering from severe prenatal psychosis, that I was financially dependent on Dominic, and that I posed an imminent physical danger to our unborn child.
Attached to the petition were signed witness statements.
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One was from our housekeeper, Maria, claiming she had heard me screaming that I regretted my pregnancy. Another was from our driver, asserting I had taken unidentified pills in the back of the car and threatened to run away to Europe with the baby.
Every single word was a manufactured lie.
