PART 2 — MY SISTER CLAIMED MY HUSBAND’S BABY, BUT ONE PAPER EXPOSED THE REAL FATHER—THEN MY STEPFATHER CONFESSED
Three hundred people turned toward the tables behind Samantha.
Nobody spoke.
Then a man slowly stood.
Samantha’s face went completely white.
I knew him.
My stepfather knew him.
And apparently, Samantha knew him too.
Eric looked at me.
“What is this?”
I handed the paper to him.
“Read it.”
His eyes moved across the page.
Then his expression changed.
The document was a DNA test.
But it wasn’t the test Samantha expected.
It proved that Eric was not the father of Samantha’s unborn baby.
The real father was the man who had just stood up.
Samantha covered her mouth.
“No…”
The man looked at her.
“You told me Eric was the father.”
A wave of whispers moved through the ballroom.
Eric stared at Samantha.
“How many lies have you told me?”
She started crying.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
I almost laughed.
“Nothing about tonight happened by accident.”
Then I turned toward my stepfather.
He hadn’t said a single word.
But his hands were still shaking.
I walked toward him.
“Why are you so nervous?”
He looked at me.
Then at the man standing three tables behind him.
Finally, he whispered:
“Because I knew.”
My heart stopped.
“Knew what?”
He lowered his voice.
“I knew Samantha was lying about the baby.”
“Since when?”
He swallowed.
“Four months.”
I stared at him.
Four months.
The exact amount of time I’d known about the affair.
The exact amount of time I’d been collecting evidence.
“You knew and didn’t tell me?”
“I tried.”
“No.”
My voice became colder.
“You didn’t try.”
He looked down.
Then he said something that made the entire situation suddenly much darker.
“Your sister wasn’t the only person Eric was seeing.”
I turned toward my husband.
Eric couldn’t look at me.
My stepfather continued.
“I discovered another woman before Samantha ever announced the pregnancy.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
He hesitated.
Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a second envelope.
“I was waiting for the right time to show you this.”
I opened it.
Inside were photographs.
Eric.
Samantha.
And another woman.
But the photographs weren’t from hotels.
They were from an office building.
A building I recognized immediately.
My family’s old company headquarters.
I looked at my stepfather.
“What were they doing there?”
He shook his head.
“They weren’t having an affair.”
My blood ran cold.
“They were stealing from you.”
I stared at the documents inside the envelope.
Bank transfers.
Forged signatures.
Hidden accounts.
And one authorization bearing my name.
Except I had never signed it.
My stepfather whispered:
“They’ve been moving money out of your company for years.”
Suddenly, Samantha’s pregnancy announcement made sense.
The affair wasn’t the real betrayal.
It was a distraction.
They had planned to humiliate me publicly so everyone would focus on the marriage scandal while they quietly completed something much bigger.
Then my stepfather handed me one final document.
“This is why they needed you to look like the unstable wife.”
I looked down.
It was a legal transfer agreement.
If I signed it, Eric would gain control of the company.
And the date on the document was tomorrow.
I slowly looked up.
Eric was staring at me.
His face had gone completely pale.
Because he finally understood something.
The anniversary party wasn’t my revenge.
It was the trap.
And they had just walked into it in front of three hundred witnesses.