Moments before my son’s wedding, I saw my husband kissing his bride. I rushed to confront them, but my son stopped me and revealed evidence of a deeper, darker betrayal.

“And Mom… There’s something else. Something big. Aisha found more.”

Aisha—my sister. A retired cop turned private investigator.

My heart sank. “What did she find?”

“She’s coming here now,” Elijah said. “But before she does… you need to be ready.”

“Ready for what?” I whispered.

He looked at me with a pain I’d never seen in his eyes before.

“For the truth about Dad, that will change everything.”

And before I could ask another question—

Aisha’s car stopped in the driveway.

And the real nightmare began.

Aisha entered my kitchen with a folder so thick it looked like a legal brief for a murder trial. Her face was grim—tight lips, sharp eyes, no trace of tenderness.

“Simone,” he said calmly, “you need to sit down.”

My stomach knotted. Elijah stayed by my side, his hand holding mine.

Ai-Ai opened the folder.

“The affair with Madison is not new,” she began. “It’s been going on for longer than Elijah suspected. And Franklin didn’t just cheat. He funded the affair with money he stole from you.”

I forced myself to breathe. “How much?”

She slid a document toward me. “Over sixty thousand dollars withdrawn from your retirement over the course of eighteen months. Every withdrawal was fake.”

My vision blurred. “He used my future to pay for hotel rooms with her?”

“That’s just the beginning,” Ai-Ai said.

She clicked on her laptop and showed us the bank statements. “Madison is also stealing. Small amounts at first, then larger amounts. She funneled over two hundred thousand dollars from her law firm into a shell company. I traced some purchases directly to gifts for Franklin.”

My skin crawled. They were stealing—from me, from her employers—to fund their own twisted fantasies.

“And that’s not the worst part,” Aisha continued softly.

Elijah stiffened. “Tell her.”

Aisha looked at me with a mixture of anger and sadness. “Fifteen years ago, Franklin had an affair with a coworker. That woman had a daughter a short time later. A little girl named Zoe.”

My heart stopped.

Elijah spoke softly. “Mom… the DNA test came back. Aisha got Franklin’s toothbrush last night.”

Aisha pushed another page toward me.

“Paternity probability: 99.999%.”

I gripped the table to keep myself upright.

“He has a daughter,” I whispered. “A child he’s kept… for fifteen years?”

“Yes,” Aisha said. “And he pays Nicole—Zoe’s mother—monthly. Quiet. Off the books.”

Everything inside me shattered—then transformed into something cold, sharp, and unrecognizable.

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