Part 4
“You weren’t angry.
You were happy.”
He closed his eyes.
“Let me speak to them.”
“No.”
“I’m their father.”
“Then you should have remembered that when they were standing outside the room.”
The boarding announcement sounded.
Marcus heard Lily ask whether it was time to go.
Panic entered his voice.
“Where are you taking them?”
“To the home my father left us in Geneva.
Their school arrangements are complete, and the temporary relocation is covered by the custody order you signed without reading.”
Marcus remembered pushing the documents away.
His attorney had urged him to review the parenting provisions.
Marcus had been too eager to reach the clinic.
“You tricked me.”
“I asked whether you wanted your lawyer to explain every page.
You said the children would slow you down.”
Behind him, his father closed his eyes in shame.
Marcus tried another approach.
“The condo is my home.”
“It belongs to the trust.”
“The car?”
“Company property.”
“My accounts?”
“Your personal account remains yours.
The corporate cards were never yours to use on Penelope.”
His voice cracked.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
For years, Julianne had asked herself the same question after every insult, every betrayal, every evening Marcus failed to come home.
He had always told her to stop being dramatic and solve her own problems.
Now she gave him the same freedom.
“You’ll figure it out.”
She ended the call.
Marcus stood motionless until a text from building security arrived.
He had thirty minutes to collect personal clothing from the condo under supervision.
The locks would then be changed.
The recovery team had already located the car he drove to the clinic.
When Marcus reached the parking garage, two company representatives were waiting beside it.
One held a clipboard.
The other requested the keys.
Roxanne stared as her brother handed them over.
“How are we supposed to get home?” she asked.
Their father turned toward her.
“We call a taxi.”
The Henderson family, who had arrived expecting to celebrate a dynasty, left the private clinic crowded into two ordinary cabs.
The scandal did not remain private for long.
Within a week, the forensic audit uncovered years of inflated invoices, personal travel disguised as corporate meetings, and payments routed through a consulting company controlled by one of Marcus’s friends.
The forged approvals transformed an internal employment matter into a criminal investigation.
Marcus insisted that Julianne was taking revenge because of the affair.
The evidence made that defense impossible.
Dates, bank records, security footage, and emails showed that she had begun the audit before she knew Penelope was pregnant.
Penelope moved out of the apartment after the company stopped paying the rent.
Adrian admitted that the affair had begun months earlier, during one of Marcus’s business trips.
He had known there was a chance the baby was his but remained silent because he was afraid of Marcus and dependent on the family.
The paternity test was repeated after the birth.
Adrian was confirmed as the father.
He and Penelope did not receive the romantic ending either had imagined.
Their relationship collapsed under the weight of lies, financial pressure, and public humiliation.
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Adrian eventually accepted legal responsibility for the child, but Penelope refused to marry him.
The baby, innocent of every adult betrayal, was kept away from the worst
