Chapter 4 - The Ghost of the Past and the Fake Contract
Two days later, while Claire rested safely in a secure, guarded private recovery wing at the hospital, I returned to the Lake Forest estate to retrieve her personal belongings and legal documents.
The house was dead silent. The staff I had hired had already been reassigned or given severance packages per my instructions; I didn't want a single person in this house who owed loyalty to anyone other than Claire and me.
In my private study, I unlocked the floor safe behind my mahogany desk to retrieve the original marriage certificates and asset deeds. As I spun the dial, a thick manila envelope slid out from the back compartment.
It was labeled in my mother’s neat, cursive handwriting: Carter-Evans Asset Protection & Postnuptial Agreement (Revised).
My brow furrowed. I had never signed a revised postnuptial agreement. Claire and I had signed a standard pre-nup twelve years ago when we had nothing, protecting our future earnings equally, but we had nullified it on our fifth anniversary.
I pulled out the document and began to read. My blood ran cold.
It was a meticulously forged legal document, dated three years ago, bearing what looked like my signature and Claire’s signature. According to the clauses within this fake contract, in the event of a child being born to the marriage, all parental custody rights would automatically default to the primary maternal guardian—Margaret Carter—in the event of any "medical incapacitation" or "domestic instability" of the mother. Furthermore, Claire would waive all rights to marital assets, leaving her destitute and powerless.
Margaret hadn't just been abusing Claire; she had been building a legal cage, brick by fraudulent brick, ensuring that when the baby was born, she could legally seize the child and banish Claire forever.
As I held the forged papers, my phone buzzed on the desk. It was an alert from my home security system app.
The front gate cameras at the perimeter of the estate had just registered a vehicle entering the driveway.
I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the circular drive. A black town car had pulled up near the front steps. The door opened, and Margaret Carter stepped out, flanked by two sharp-looking attorneys from a notorious family law firm in downtown Chicago.
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She thought she could waltz back into my house, take control of the premises, and enforce her fraudulent contracts while I was distracted at the hospital.
She had severely underestimated how thoroughly I was done playing the dutiful son.
