Before Richard could even attempt to formulate a pathetic excuse, the heavy oak doors at the back of the ballroom didn’t just open—they violently banged against the walls.
“Mine, you cheap, lying bastards!” a shrill, furious female voice screamed.
The crowd of high-society elites parted like the Red Sea, socialites and investors practically falling over themselves to get out of the way of the incoming storm.
Stomping down the center aisle of the grand ballroom, her face flushed with absolute, unhinged fury, was Jessica.
She did not belong at the St. Jude’s charity gala, and she clearly didn’t give a damn. She was wearing a tight, neon-pink velour track jacket, heavy, smeared eyeliner, and a pair of worn-out white sneakers. She completely ignored the horrified gasps of the socialites, her eyes locked like targeting lasers on the kneeling, weeping figure of Richard Belmont on the stage.
“Jessica?!” Richard squeaked, scrambling backward on his hands and knees like a crab, his eyes wide with fresh, unparalleled terror. “What are you doing here?! You promised you’d stay at the condo! I told you not to come to the hospital!”
“I promised I’d stay quiet as long as the direct deposit hit my account on the first of the damn month, Ricky!” Jessica shouted, marching straight up the short stairs to the edge of the stage.
She crossed her arms, glaring down at him with pure, venomous disgust.
“You’re three days late on the ten-grand installment!” Jessica announced to the entire room. “You think I’m renting out my kids for free so you can play daddy with all your country club snobs?”
Eleanor Belmont looked as if she had been physically struck by lightning. She clutched her chest, her breathing becoming incredibly shallow and rapid. Her heavily powdered face turned a mottled, unhealthy shade of purple.
“Renting?” Eleanor choked out, the word barely escaping her restricted throat.
“Yeah, lady, renting,” Jessica snapped, turning her harsh, unforgiving glare onto the matriarch. “Ricky here found me working the late shift at a diner across town six months ago. I was already knocked up by my deadbeat ex-boyfriend. Ricky saw my belly, offered to pay off my massive credit card debts, put me in a fancy downtown condo, and give me ten grand a month in cash if I let him pretend the twins were his.”
Jessica scoffed loudly, looking around at the lavish, million-dollar decorations of the ballroom with overt disgust.
“Said his rich, crazy mommy was obsessed with having grandbabies and he needed to put on a show so he wouldn’t get cut out of the massive will,” Jessica continued, her voice echoing clearly over the microphone Richard had dropped. “I told him it was weird as hell, but money is money. I got bills to pay. But if the check bounces, Ricky, the show is over. I’m taking my kids and going home.”
The absolute, devastating, soul-crushing reality crashed down on Eleanor like a collapsing building.
It was the ultimate, inescapable cuckoldry. Her son hadn’t just faked a medical record. He hadn’t just lied about his wife. He had actively, knowingly financed another man’s genetic legacy, dressing them up in expensive white silk, and parading them in front of the city’s elite, purely out of a pathetic, cowardly terror of his own mother’s judgment.
The precious Belmont bloodline she worshipped was completely, irrevocably dead. The highly touted heirs to the empire were a rented prop from a diner waitress.
Chapter 5: The Edge of Madness
6 months after my divorce for “infertility”, my ex-mother-in-law humiliated me at a hospital charity gala. Taking the mic in front of hundreds, she proudly unveiled a custom stroller containing newborn twins. “My son finally left his defective, barren wife for a woman who actually matters,” she sneered. The elite crowd gasped. I didn’t cry. Then, a towering, powerful man stepped beside me, held my waist, and stared her down: “Are you sure your son told you the truth?”
Part 4 of 7
