And there were more revelations ahead.
At four o’clock, Gloria phoned, crying. “Harper, please, we need to talk. The bank blocked a card and Trent says you took everything from us.”
“That card belongs to my personal account. Nobody was authorized to use it.”
“But we’re family.”
“You stopped treating me like family long before I decided on a divorce.”
Between sobs, she admitted another problem. “We have a huge problem. We already paid the deposit on the venue for the wedding, and we borrowed money from several relatives.”
“How much?”
“Almost fifty thousand dollars.”
I fell silent. They had committed almost fifty thousand dollars to celebrating my husband’s wedding to the woman whose expenses he’d secretly been paying with my money.
“Who was going to pay that money, Gloria?”
“Trent said he’d get a share of your company.”
“And you believed him?”
She offered no reply. I finally voiced the question that had haunted me since discovering the affair. “How long did you know Trent had another woman?”
She drew a long breath. “Brooke is a good girl. I just wanted my son to have a real family.”
With that, my last affectionate memory of Gloria seemed to break. For five years I’d bought her prescriptions, accompanied her to medical appointments, paid for repairs to her home, and regarded her as another mother. All that time, while I exhausted myself working, she had actively helped her son maintain his affair.
“I wanted a real family too, Gloria,” I said. “I thought you were part of it.”
My voice finally faltered. “But you never loved me like a daughter. You only wanted the money I could give you.”
She began apologizing, but the damage was done. “Everything about the invoices and the false documents will be handled through the attorneys. Don’t ask me for money again.”
After hanging up, I locked myself in the office restroom and cried for several minutes. I wasn’t mourning Trent. I was grieving the woman who’d blamed herself for not being loving enough, who had sacrificed years trying to earn genuine affection through endless generosity.
When I emerged, Joni was there with water. “You don’t have to prove anything else to them, Harper.”
“I know. But now I have to protect what we built.”
During the weeks that followed, Gavin assembled the documentation required for formal complaints. A forensic document specialist examined the guaranty on Brooke’s lease and identified important discrepancies between my genuine signature and the imitation. We uncovered additional invoices for technology services my company had never purchased. Several vendor details connected to individuals associated with Trent, allowing us to examine payments apparently supported by falsified documents. Our concerns were no longer merely about questionable family expenses; they now rested on identifiable business transactions and contracts.
Trent began phoning every day. His approach shifted from insults to threats of litigation, and eventually to requests for cash.
“Harper, Brooke is desperate. We have nowhere to live like before.”
“You have a job and a family. Organize your life with your own resources.”
“I can’t support her on a thousand dollars a month!”
“Then you shouldn’t have promised her a millionaire’s life.”
A week later, an unexpected request arrived from Brooke. She wanted to speak with me. I agreed to meet at Gavin’s office, with my lawyer present. She came without makeup, wearing plain clothing, her eyes swollen from crying. She looked nothing like the woman who had posed with luxury handbags in photographs.
“I didn’t know Trent wasn’t the owner of the company,” she said as soon as she sat down.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you knew he was married.”
Brooke dropped her gaze. “His mother told me you two had been emotionally separated for years. She said you humiliated him for earning less.”
Anger and sorrow rose together. “I never humiliated Trent over his salary. What hurt me was that he lied, spent without consulting me, and treated me as if working were a defect.”
She fell quiet before tears began streaming down her cheeks. “There’s something I have to confess.”
Gavin and I glanced at one another.
“Before I met Trent, I was with Kyle. We never completely broke up. He was in debt, and I thought Trent could help me.”
“What does that have to do with your pregnancy?”
Brooke clasped her hands over her stomach. “I’m not sure who the father is.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
“Trent believes the baby is his,” I murmured.
“I know.”
“And you let him leave his marriage using that child as an excuse?”
Her crying intensified. “I was afraid he’d leave me. His mother kept talking about a mansion, a huge company, and how my child would never want for anything.”
I considered her quietly. She had participated in something cruel, but an unborn child should never become a bargaining tool in an adult’s deception, whatever money was involved.
“The child isn’t to blame for any of this,” I told her. “But you and Trent have to face the truth. Paternity isn’t decided with promises or photographs. When he’s born, you’ll need to settle it legally.”
She nodded. Before departing, Brooke willingly supplied copies of messages indicating that Trent and Gloria understood where some of the paperwork used to finance her condo had originated. The material gave Gavin additional evidence for our case.
That night, Trent rang me in a fury. “You told Brooke I don’t have money!”
“I didn’t have to. She figured it out herself.”
“You ruined my family!”
“You decided to lie to her and betray me.”
I then told him that Brooke had admitted uncertainty about the child’s father. He went silent before giving a shaky laugh. “She’s lying to hurt me.”
