Chapter 2 - Unravelling the Web
The grand hallway of Saint Jude’s Private Hospital was locked down. While twin pediatricians verified that baby Noah and baby Grace were safe under double-guard protection, Margaret was processed right in the hospital's private security office due to her hysterical hyperventilation.
Andrew stood outside my room, pacing like a trapped animal. I allowed him five minutes.
“How could you?” Andrew sobbed, wringing his hands. “My mother is an older woman! You’re putting her in handcuffs hours after giving birth to my children? Have you no heart?”
“Where was her heart when she slapped a woman whose abdominal wall was literally held together by surgical staples?” I countered, staring him down from my bed. “Where was her heart when she decided my son was a commodity to be handed over to Natalie like a party favor?”
“Natalie has been depressed for five years!” Andrew yelled, dropping his mask of the dutiful husband. “She can’t have children! You have two! Would it really have killed you to let her raise Noah? We could have raised Grace together! We would still be a family!”
I looked at the man I had married three years ago—a man I thought was merely insecure, but who was actually fundamentally rotten. “You knew,” I said quietly. The realization hit me like a physical blow. “You knew she was coming here tonight with those papers.”
Andrew went quiet. His silence was his confession.
“I didn't think she would hit you,” he muttered, looking at the floor. “I just thought… if we gave Noah to Natalie, Mom would finally accept you. She would finally leave us alone! You have so much money, Katherine! You’re a judge! You can always adopt or get surrogacy later!”
“Get out,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, but laced with an authority that had put cartel bosses behind bars.
“Katherine, listen to me—”
“If you are not out of this room in ten seconds,” I said, reaching for the emergency call button connected directly to the U.S. Marshals desk downstairs, “I will have you cited for obstruction of justice and accessory to attempted kidnapping. Get out of my sight.”
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Andrew fled, but as the door clicked shut, I knew this was far from over. The Ellis family had lived off dark money and systemic corruption in this city for decades. They thought they owned the local police, the local family court, and the local press.
They didn't realize they had brought a knife to a federal gunfight.
