Chapter 2

My stomach dropped.

Everything inside me went cold.

The danmaku popped up again.

【Stay calm. Don't let him get to you.】

【Your marriage certificate is fake. His debts can't touch you.】

【Look into his marriage history and you'll know who the child's real mother is.】

I looked at Jared, still smug, and something cold flickered in my eyes.

Then I turned and went to the testing lab.

I handed over his sample and Georgie's.

I paid four times the price.

"Money isn't the issue. The faster, the better."

Then I went straight to the county records office.

I handed the marriage certificate to the clerk.

The woman gave me a pitying look and turned the screen toward me.

"Ms. Henson, your marriage certificate is indeed fake. Mr. Cross did have a prior marriage to another woman."

I clenched my fists tight and breathed in slowly.

The name in the system belonged to a woman I'd never heard of.

Jared had been lying to me from the very start.

The whole thing had been his careful setup all along.

I took a photo, and a message from Jared came through.

He said the family had already gone to the hotel.

For his mother's birthday.

He told me to buy a cake.

I didn't reply. I watched the messages in the family group chat scroll by fast.

Every one of them tagging me.

Buttered garlic shrimp, surf-and-turf platter, lobster and scallops, all the most expensive dishes.

【Who's paying for all this?】

Jared's five-thousand-a-month salary couldn't even cover it.

The only place it could come from was the shared-payment account linked to me.

The second I said it, the chat went dead silent.

【What's that supposed to mean? Delete it now. Are you trying to embarrass me?】

【And Georgie's crying from hunger. What kind of mother are you?】

But I was never her mother to begin with.

I didn't answer him, and I didn't buy any cake.

Once the results came in, I drove straight to the hotel.

The lobby was full of Cross family members.

My mother-in-law pushed through the crowd toward me, her eyes dropping to my empty hands, and her face changed at once.

Those small, hard eyes fixed on me.

"Today is my birthday. Where's the cake? Little one's still waiting!"

"You sit there taking up space without laying an egg, and now you can't even bother for my birthday?"

Jared came over too, his brows knotted tight.

"Penelope, what exactly did I tell you? You just have to make trouble for me, don't you?"

He grabbed my sleeve and started dragging me toward the door.

He lowered his voice on purpose.

"There are a lot of people here today, so I'll let it go. Just hurry up and go buy it. Don't embarrass us."

"Word gets out, and it won't sound good."

I gave a cold laugh and shook his hand off.

I looked at my mother-in-law.

Not a single person in the family stepped up to speak for me.

"You keep saying I can't have a child. So why do I keep miscarrying? Your family should know that better than anyone, shouldn't they?"