Chapter 6 - JUDITH HAD BEEN PROFITING FROM THE PREGNANCY
Bell Aesthetics Holdings owned two cosmetic clinics.
Lauren had worked there briefly after college.
Judith built the company.
Lauren hated it.
That was what she always told me.
Apparently she did not hate the money.
The $310,000 payment was labeled:
BRAND RESTRUCTURING REPAYMENT.
My forensic accountant found no clear underlying invoice.
Then another transfer:
$95,000.
Personal account belonging to Judith.
Memo:
ADVANCE RECOVERY.
Judith’s attorney claimed these payments repaid legitimate family loans.
Maybe.
We asked for documentation.
The documents arrived.
Some were real.
Some were strangely recent.
One promissory note was dated three years earlier.
Digital metadata showed it had been created eight weeks ago.
That changed the investigation.
I did not accuse Judith personally.
I handed everything to counsel.
Then family court granted me temporary sole physical custody while the situation was investigated.
Lauren could not have unsupervised contact.
I expected relief.
Instead, when the judge said it, I felt grief.
This was Emma’s mother.
This was not how anything was supposed to begin.
Afterward, Lauren’s attorney asked to speak privately with mine.
Lauren was cooperating with evaluation.
She was not requesting Emma’s return.
Not yet.
Then came a statement.
Not an excuse.
Lauren admitted she had never wanted motherhood.
She also admitted she agreed to pregnancy because of the trust.
My stomach turned.
Then the attorney added:
“She says she believed Paige would eventually raise Emma.”
“So she lied to me for almost a year.”
Nobody answered.
Then:
“She also says her mother pressured her heavily.”
Pressure.
Not force.
That distinction mattered.
Lauren was thirty-five years old.
Capable of choices.
Judith could manipulate without erasing Lauren’s responsibility.
Then my accountant uncovered something I never expected.
Lauren had stopped filling her birth-control prescription eleven months before she told me she wanted to start trying for a baby.
That alone proved nothing.
Then we found a fertility tracking subscription.
Private.
Paid from an account I did not know about.
Dates began fourteen months earlier.
Three months before Lauren told me she had changed her mind.
I stared at the timeline.
Our daughter had not been an unexpected accident.
May you like
The pregnancy had been deliberately planned.
Just not with me.
Related Stories
