Chapter 14

I gave him a long look, then raised the mic again. “You’ve all seen it. This is what Vanessa Whitaker does. She was the perpetrator in high school. And now she was ready to make Ethan raise some other man’s child.”

“You’re lying! I was forced! I was threatened too!” Vanessa screamed, completely out of control now.

But with the evidence in plain sight, no amount of raging could shift a single fact.

I took the copy I’d made of the pregnancy report and walked toward her, step by step. “You and Ethan have been together for a month or two, at most. He follows the family’s values. He hasn’t touched you before marriage. So — this baby — whose is it?”

The news of Vanessa’s pregnancy had thrown even me for a loop at first.

The lead had come from Brittany — she worked as a receptionist at a private OB-GYN clinic in LA. She’d had a crush on Ethan years back, and even though he’d turned her down and nothing came of it, she’d quietly kept tabs on the people in his life.

Recently, in the clinic’s appointment system, she’d spotted Vanessa’s name — the appointment was for an abortion.