Chapter 5 - The Private Investigator
I met the private investigator in the back booth of a dimly lit diner on the edge of town.
His name was Marcus, and he came highly recommended by Diane, my incredibly loyal accountant.
Marcus slid a thick manila folder across the sticky table while stirring his black coffee.
“Your husband is not a very smart criminal, Audrey,” Marcus said with a gruff chuckle.
I opened the folder and stared at a series of high-resolution photographs taken outside an illegal gambling club.
“Gavin has a massive, completely uncontrollable gambling addiction that he has been hiding for years,” Marcus explained.
“He owes a very dangerous organized crime syndicate roughly two million dollars.”
The mystery of the massive commercial loan was instantly and terrifyingly solved.
Gavin had forged my signature to steal the money to save his own miserable life from loan sharks.
“What about my sister?” I asked, flipping to the next page of the investigative report.
“Brooke has absolutely no idea that Gavin is completely bankrupt and in debt to the mob,” Marcus replied.
“She genuinely believes he is a wealthy, successful businessman who is going to give her a life of luxury.”
I could not help but smile at the delicious irony of my sister’s pathetic, greedy delusion.
She had betrayed me to steal a man who was actually a desperate, penniless fraud.
“There is one more thing you need to see, Audrey,” Marcus said, his tone turning completely serious.
He handed me a sealed envelope bearing the logo of a prominent local medical laboratory.
“I managed to procure a DNA sample from the newborn baby at the hospital by bribing a disposal technician,” he confessed.
I looked at the envelope, my heart suddenly racing with a wild, unexpected theory.
“I ran a comparative paternity test against the DNA from the coffee cup Gavin threw away at his office,” Marcus continued.
I tore the envelope open and read the bold, undeniable conclusion printed at the bottom of the page.
Probability of Paternity: 0.00%.
Gavin was not the biological father of Brooke’s newborn child.
“Do we know who the real father is?” I asked, staring in shock at the incredible document.
Marcus pulled a final photograph from his jacket pocket and placed it gently on the table.
It was a picture of Brooke kissing a tall, heavily tattooed man outside a dive bar nine months ago.
“The real father is a notorious enforcer for the exact same crime syndicate that Gavin currently owes money to,” Marcus revealed.
My sister had slept with a dangerous mobster, gotten pregnant, and then manipulated my idiot husband into claiming the child.
She was using Gavin to secure a comfortable life, completely unaware that Gavin was using my stolen assets to pay off her actual baby daddy’s bosses.
It was a beautiful, chaotic circle of absolute treason and monumental stupidity.
I thanked Marcus, paid his exorbitant fee in cash, and walked back out to my car.
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I had sixteen days until the elaborate engagement and christening party my family was secretly planning.
I now possessed enough explosive ammunition to completely obliterate every single one of their lives.
