Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN WEARING MY BRACELET
We met in a private conference room.
No Caleb.
I was not ready to have her near him.
Sabrina arrived without makeup.
Without designer clothes.
Without my bracelet.
She placed it on the table.
“I should have returned this sooner.”
I stared at it.
Ryan had given me that bracelet on our wedding day.
I remembered crying when he fastened it around my wrist.
I remembered believing I was safe.
Now it looked like metal.
Nothing more.
“You knew it was mine.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you wear it to court?”
Her eyes filled.
“Because Ryan asked me to.”
I frowned.
“He said it would show you that it was over.”
Something cold moved through me.
Not Sabrina.
Ryan.
Even during a custody hearing concerning our six-day-old child, Ryan had planned a small act of humiliation.
That was who he was.
Sabrina pushed the bracelet toward me.
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t pick it up.
“You were willing to take my child.”
She looked down.
“Yes.”
“You helped them build the nursery.”
“Yes.”
“You knew they were trying to declare me unstable.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know Ryan was hurting me?”
A long silence.
“I knew he grabbed you once.”
“Once?”
“I knew what he told me.”
“And you believed him?”
“I chose to.”
That answer surprised me.
Not an excuse.
The truth.
Sabrina had chosen the version that benefited her.
“I wanted the life he promised.”
She wiped her eyes.
“He told me you hated being pregnant.”
“That you didn’t want Caleb.”
“That you talked about leaving him at the hospital.”
My hands curled.
“I never said any of those things.”
“I know now.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
She gave me a sad smile.
“Because then I might have learned something I didn’t want to know.”
I understood that more than I wished I did.
I had ignored truths about Ryan too.
Not because I was cruel.
Because truth threatened the life I wanted to believe I had.
Sabrina opened her bag.
“I brought something.”
A small notebook.
Ryan’s.
“He left it at Ashland.”
Inside were financial entries.
Payments.
Initials.
Dates.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Dr. Nolan Beck.
I knew the name.
Psychiatrist.
I had never met him.
Yet he had written a preliminary evaluation about me.
Based entirely on Ryan’s descriptions.
The report described me as possibly delusional.
Emotionally unstable.
Potentially unsafe around an infant.
Ryan had paid him twelve thousand dollars.
Dr. Beck was supposed to perform the evaluation after Caleb’s birth.
If I refused, they would call refusal evidence.
If I agreed, he had already been primed to see me as unstable.
The system had been rigged before I entered the room.
Investigators interviewed Dr. Beck.
He initially denied wrongdoing.
Then confronted with payment records, he changed his story.
Ryan had lied to him.
Grant had provided misleading information.
Diane had described imaginary incidents.
Dr. Beck still should have known better.
His licensing board opened an investigation.
One by one, every professional Ryan recruited began protecting themselves.
And every time they did, they handed investigators another piece of him.
But the notebook contained something else.
A payment to M. Vega.
My heart stopped.
Marisol Vega.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
The woman who gave me the first recording.
The woman who had been beside me.
The woman currently helping care for Caleb.
I called Natalie immediately.
“Get someone to my apartment.”
“Why?”
“Marisol.”
“What happened?”
“Ryan paid her.”
I hung up.
Then I ran home.
The front door was unlocked.
My stomach dropped.
“Marisol?”
No answer.
May you like
I rushed toward Caleb’s room.
His bassinet was empty.
