Chapter 2 - The Unraveling Fraud
For three seconds, the entire room seemed to lose its ability to draw breath. The hysterical wailing, the shouted threats, the sirens wailing in the far distance—all of it faded into a suffocating silence.
The indentation in Chloe’s dress sat there, frozen and unnatural.
"What... what is that?" Liam whispered, his hands trembling as he stared at his girlfriend’s midsection. His voice sounded paper-thin, like a child confronting a nightmare.
"Look at it!" David shouted again, straining against my father and brothers. "That’s memory foam! That’s high-density upholstery silicone under that dress! There is no baby in there! There never was!"
"Shut up! Shut up!" Chloe screamed, but the pitch of her voice had completely changed. The agonized cries of an injured expectant mother were gone, replaced by a sharp, panicked, cornered screech. She tried to roll onto her stomach to hide the crater, but I was already moving.
My mind refused to process what my eyes were seeing. My hands went numb as I reached forward.
"Jenna, don't! Don't touch me, you b***h!" Chloe hissed, thrashing violently.
I didn't listen. I grabbed the hem of her floral dress and yanked it upward.
A collective gasp ripped through the relatives still standing in the parlor.
There was no soft, rounded, warm flesh. Wrapped tightly around my sister’s slender torso was an intricate, layered contraption made of medical-grade silicone, heavy canvas straps, and industrial Velcro. Beneath the silicone outer shell, thick layers of contoured memory foam were strapped to her abdomen. David’s knuckle prints were clearly visible in the crushed synthetic material, which had buckled under the impact and failed to rebound.
My mother stopped mid-sob. Her mouth fell open, her face draining of every drop of color until she looked like a corpse. "Chloe...?"
Liam stumbled backward, falling onto his rear, his eyes wide and vacant. "Chloe... what is that? What are you wearing?"
Chloe didn't answer. She scrambled backward on her elbows, kicking wrapping paper out of the way, desperate to reach the back hallway. But my father, who had released his grip on David, took three slow, deliberate steps forward. His eyes were wide with a horrifying combination of rage and utter devastation.
"What is this?" Dad asked, his voice shaking. "Chloe. What the hell is strapped to your body?"
David stepped away from Marcus and Luke, straightening his torn collar. He reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a manila folder, tossing it onto the shattered dining room table. Documents, receipts, and printed photographs spilled across the mahogany surface.
"She’s been buying them online for six months," David said, his voice flat, ruthless, and deadly calm. "Stage one: twelve weeks. Stage two: twenty weeks. Stage three: third trimester. She bought three different sizes from an overseas theatrical prosthetic company based in California. I tracked the credit card statements."
"You went through my things?!" Chloe snarled from the floor, no longer crying, her eyes flashing with pure malice.
"You left your old laptop at our house two weeks ago, Chloe," David said, pointing a finger at her. "You asked me to fix the charging port. You didn't clear your browser cache. Do you want me to read the search history out loud? Do you want me to tell Mom and Dad what you’ve been searching?"
"David, stop..." I whispered, my knees giving out. I collapsed onto the floor among the torn blue ribbons. My whole body was shaking so hard my teeth clattered. "Please... this isn't real. This can't be real."
"It’s real, Jenna," David said softly, looking at me with a mixture of heartbreak and fierce vindication. "Search history: *How to fake morning sickness successfully.* *Ultrasound images 24 weeks free download.* *How to edit medical watermarks in Photoshop.* *What to say when people ask about your cervix dilation.*"
"Oh God," Aunt Sarah gasped, leaning against the hallway wall. "The ultrasounds..."
Two months ago, Chloe had broken down in tears at Sunday dinner, showing us an ultrasound that showed severe placenta previa. She had claimed she needed high-risk specialist care not covered by Liam’s basic insurance.
My parents had emptied five thousand dollars from their emergency savings. Aunt Sarah had contributed three thousand. Liam’s widowed mother had taken out a personal loan for ten thousand dollars. In total, between family contributions and a GoFundMe campaign Chloe had launched, over thirty-two thousand dollars had been transferred into her personal account to pay for 'specialist consultations' at the prestigious St. Jude’s Women’s Center downtown.
"I called St. Jude’s yesterday," David said, staring down at Chloe. "I pretended to be her husband calling about an overdue invoice. They have no patient named Chloe Vance. She hasn't seen an OB-GYN in three years. There were no appointments. There were no high-risk complications. There is no baby."
"You stole from us?" Liam choked out, rising slowly to his feet. He looked at the woman he had loved for four years as if she were a total stranger wearing her skin. "My mother gave you her retirement money! She didn't pay her heating bill last month because she thought our son was in danger! You made me talk to your stomach every night! I read books to that... to that f***ing foam!"
Chloe’s chest heaved. Cornered, exposed, and stripped of her victimhood, the facade completely shattered. She didn't cry. She didn't apologize. A chilling, ugly smirk tugged at the corner of her lips.
"You’re all pathetic," Chloe whispered. "You think you’re so smart, David? You think you solved a little mystery?"
"No," David said, his eyes darkening. "I didn't do this to expose your financial scam, Chloe. If it were just the money, I would have let the police arrest you quietly tomorrow. But that’s not why I hit you today."
David took a step closer, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
May you like
"Tell them where you were going tonight, Chloe. Tell them what you were planning to do at six o'clock tomorrow morning."
***
