Chapter 12 - LAUREN CHOOSES A SIDE
Lauren cried when Sarah showed her the email.
Not quietly.
Not elegantly.
She stared at Nathan’s words.
Lauren knows how to push her.
The bracelet should do it.
“I didn’t know.”
Sarah said nothing.
Lauren looked at me.
“I swear.”
I believed that part.
Not because I trusted her.
Because the message made sense.
Nathan manipulated both of us differently.
He told Lauren I was unstable and vindictive.
He told me Lauren was only a colleague.
He told Diane she was protecting the family.
He told Mark everything was temporary.
He told lenders the company was healthy.
He told himself he controlled everyone.
Lauren hired attorney Maya Chen.
Then began turning over evidence.
Text messages.
Photographs.
Bank statements.
Voice notes.
One message from Nathan read.
Wear the green coat tomorrow.
It makes you look like you belong beside me.
Another.
Take the bracelet.
Rachel needs to understand things have changed.
Lauren replied.
Won’t that upset her?
Nathan answered.
That’s the point.
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
Then Lauren produced something worse.
A voice recording.
She made it three weeks earlier after Nathan refused to put Eli into his formal estate plan.
Lauren threatened to leave.
Nathan responded.
“You’re not leaving.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve taken money from companies you don’t understand.”
“You signed consulting invoices.”
“If this goes bad, your name is in it too.”
Lauren whispered.
“You said they were legal.”
Nathan laughed.
“Then pray they are.”
She had been trapped too.
Again.
That did not erase her choices.
But it explained why she looked frightened now.
Maya asked.
“What do you want?”
Lauren looked at Eli playing with a toy car in the next room.
“I want my son out.”
Not money.
Not Nathan.
Out.
Sarah said.
“Then tell the truth.”
Lauren nodded.
She gave investigators access to her accounts.
Returned gifts bought through suspicious transfers.
And signed an affidavit about the hospital.
The bracelet.
The plan to bring Eli home with us.
Nathan’s instructions to provoke me.
Then she admitted something I did not expect.
“He told me Caleb would eventually live with us.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“He said after you had the baby, you would probably need treatment.”
“That the children might need stability.”
I stared.
Nathan had already promised my son to another household.
Lauren began crying.
“I thought you were sick.”
I stood.
She flinched.
I did not yell.
I simply said.
“You thought a mother was mentally ill, so you helped her husband take her dead mother’s bracelet and brought another child to her hospital room to upset her.”
Lauren looked down.
“Yes.”
“Remember that when you tell yourself Nathan made every choice for you.”
Her face collapsed.
Good.
Accountability mattered.
Then I softened one thing.
“Eli is innocent.”
She looked up.
“So is Caleb.”
I continued.
“And Emma.”
May you like
She nodded through tears.
“Then help us make sure Nathan cannot use any of them again.”
