Chapter 11 - Lucinda Finally Admitted What She Had Planned
Once the paternity result was confirmed, Lucinda’s lawyer advised silence.
But silence is hard to maintain when too many people already know enough to corner you.
Three days later, she asked to speak with me privately in the presence of counsel.
I almost refused.
Then I decided I wanted to hear whatever remained of the truth from her own mouth.
She looked nothing like the bride from the wedding reception.
No polished gown.
No perfect hair.
No social smile.
Just a tired woman in a cream sweater, sitting with both hands wrapped around a paper cup she barely touched.
“I didn’t set out wanting your child,” she said first.
I didn’t answer.
“That night at the gala, Preston and I were already fighting. He kept delaying the legal trust transfer his family promised after the wedding. Everything with him was conditions and appearances and waiting.”
“So you drugged me?”
Her gaze dropped.
“I had help getting medication,” she said quietly. “I put it in your champagne. I thought if anything happened between us, I’d have options.”
The room went cold around me.
Options.
As if my body, my consent, my child’s future—none of it meant more than leverage.
She kept talking, perhaps because stopping would mean hearing herself.
“You had always seemed steady. Decent. Better than Preston in some ways. I told myself maybe if I got pregnant, I could decide later who offered the better life.”
I stared at her in disbelief.
“And when you learned the baby was mine?”
“I panicked.”
“Because you wanted Preston’s money.”
Her silence confirmed it.
She said she kept the hallway still because it reminded her which night mattered. She kept the prenatal report because she needed to compare dates. When the wedding came, she hid both in the vase planning to destroy them after the legal paperwork was filed.
Instead, Elisa knocked them into the light.
Lucinda wiped her eyes.
“I never meant to hit your daughter.”
That was the first thing she said that made me genuinely angry enough to stand.
May you like
“You also never meant to tell the truth,” I said. “That’s the difference.”
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