I walked into my boyfriend’s family barbecue twenty-seven weeks pregnant

The fluorescent lights in the visitation booth of the women’s correctional facility buzzed with a low, sickening hum. The partition between us was scratched plexiglass, smeared with years of greasy fingerprints and hopeless tears.

On the other side of the glass sat Denise Mercer.

She wore an orange jumpsuit that hung loosely on her frame. The immaculate blowout, the manicured nails, the designer silk blouses from her country club days were long gone. Her gray roots had grown in, her skin was sallow, and dark circles bruised the hollows beneath her eyes. Yet, when she saw Tyler sit down and pick up the black plastic telephone receiver, a sickening, familiar spark of malice flared in her gaze.

Tyler lifted the receiver to his ear. I stood two paces behind his chair, my arms crossed, watching the woman who had tried to steal my baby’s life before she was even born.

Denise picked up her phone. Her voice came through the crackling speaker on Tyler’s side, loud enough for me to hear in the quiet room.

"You look tired, Tyler," she crooned, a grotesque parody of maternal concern. "Fatherhood wearing you down? Or did my dear cousin Helene finally drop by for tea?"

Tyler’s hand tightened around the receiver until his knuckles turned chalk white. "What did you do, Denise?"

"I built an empire for you!" she snapped, her demeanor shifting instantly into manic indignation. "I sacrificed everything to ensure you wouldn't grow up a penniless bastard in the shadow of the Vanderberg estate! When your father died in that boating accident twenty-five years ago, his family tried to write us off with pennies! They called me a social climber. They called you an inconvenient consequence!"

"My father died of a heart attack in Chicago," Tyler said, his voice deadly quiet. "That’s what you told me my entire life."

Denise let out a sharp, mocking cackle that caused the guard by the door to glance over warningly. "Chicago? You naive boy. Your father was Julian Vanderberg. He died off the coast of Monaco. And under the original trust created by his grandfather, Julian's direct male heir inherits fifty-one percent of the transatlantic shipping lines and commercial holdings—*provided* the heir’s lineage remains unpolluted by scandal or fraud."

"So you lied," Tyler said, the realization settling heavily into his chest. "You faked my birth documents to dodge their oversight, took payouts from their secondary funds, and kept me in the dark."

"I protected you!" Denise hissed, leaning forward, pressing her palms against the plexiglass. "I funneled their money through the American shell companies! Every cent you spent on your college tuition, every dollar that funded your early engineering startups, came from Julian’s trust! But Helene... Helene has been hunting for an excuse to invalidate Julian’s line for twenty years. When I was arrested, the forensic accountants opened the books. They saw the transfers. And Helene realized that if she can prove your daughter isn't of Julian’s pure bloodline, or if she can prove you violated the trust’s moral morality clause by fathering a child out of wedlock, the entire trust reverts to her branch!"

"We don't care about their damn money!" Tyler barked, slamming his free palm against the counter. "We never asked for their millions! They came to our house, Denise! They threatened to take Maeve! They filed an injunction to seize our child for international paternity testing!"

Denise’s expression suddenly twisted from manic fury to genuine, chilling terror. The smugness vanished completely, leaving her looking withered and frail.

"They did what?" she whispered.

"You heard me," Tyler said. "They have an international warrant pending in federal court. They want Maeve."

"Tyler, listen to me," Denise said, her voice dropping to a frantic, breathless rasp against the microphone. "You cannot let Helene touch that baby. You cannot let her medical team take Maeve’s blood."

"Why?" Tyler demanded. "Because she'll prove you lied about my father?"

"No, you idiot!" Denise cried, tears of raw panic spilling over her sunken cheeks. "Because if Helene gets Maeve’s sample alone in a European laboratory, she will forge the results! She will declare Maeve illegitimate, strip your legal custody under the trust’s archaic conservatorship clause, and claim Maeve as a ward of the Swiss court to control the remaining trust capital! She doesn't want to disprove Maeve’s lineage, Tyler... she wants to steal her to keep the trust alive under her own guardianship!"

The phone went dead as the guard stepped forward, tapping his watch. "Time’s up, Mercer."