Chapter three

Mitchelle

I stumbled out of the elevator and into the underground parking garage where my hands shook violently as I fumbled for my car keys. I practically fell into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut to muffle the scream that tore from my throat.

I drove out of the building with tears blurring my vision and ignored the angry honks of other drivers as I swerved through the city traffic. I dialed Danika’s number and sobbed when she picked up on the second ring.

"Chelley?" Danika asked with panic in her voice. "What is wrong?"

"He ruined me Danika," I cried into the phone. "Jason and Chloe... they took everything."

"Where are you?" Danika demanded.

"I am coming to your place," I choked out. "I have nowhere else to go."

I drove the familiar route to Danika’s apartment building on the outskirts of town and barely parked the car before jumping out. I ran up the stairs to the third floor and Danika was already standing in her doorway with her arms open.

I collapsed into her arms and let the weight of the betrayal crush me.

Danika and I grew up together. She had always been my best friend, holding my hand through all the struggles of life especially when I lost my mother.

"I got you," Danika whispered while stroking my hair. "I got you Chelley."

She led me inside and sat me down on her frayed sofa while I cried until my chest ached.

"Tell me everything," Danika urged softly while handing me a glass of water.

I told her about the office and the affair and the eggs. I told her how my parents had sold me and how Jason had harvested me like livestock.

"I want to sue them Danika," I said while wiping my face. "I want to sue Hunt Enterprises and the clinic for stealing my body parts. They have to pay for what they did."

Danika picked up the crumpled documents I had salvaged and flipped through them with a frown.

"Chelley you know I love you but we have to be realistic," Danika said gently. "We cannot win a lawsuit against Jason Hunt, he owns half the judges in this city and has a legal team that costs more than my entire firm makes in a decade."

"So I just let them win?" I asked. "I let them steal my husband and my sister and my unborn children and walk away?"

"If we sue them they will bury you in legal fees and drag your name through the mud until you have nothing left," Danika explained. "They will paint you as the unstable jealous sister and with the signed affidavit they have a solid defense even if it was obtained deceptively."

I remembered the day of the wedding three years ago when my parents had pulled me into that private room. They had cried and begged me to save the family reputation when Chloe ran off but now I realized they knew about her infertility all along.

I couldn't believe Chloe's mom could succeed in brainwashing my father to do this with her. Well, ever since my mother died and he married her, she made him see Chloe as the perfect one and me a mistake.

"My parents knew," I whispered. "They were in on it Danika. They sacrificed me to give Chloe a baby."

"I know," Danika pulled me into a hug again. "And that is why we have to be smarter than them."

"I have nothing," I cried. "I am broke and homeless and humiliated. How do I even start to pick up my life?"

"We don't start from zero," Danika stated while pulling back to look me in the eye. "I have an idea."

"What kind of idea?" I asked.

"You agree to the divorce and glow up" Danika proposed. "But you give him an ultimatum."

"What ultimatum?" I frowned.

"He either gives you forty million dollars as a settlement for the emotional distress and medical fraud or you stay married for exactly one more month," Danika explained.

"Why would he agree to that?" I asked. "He wants me gone immediately."

"Because we threaten to sue him for five hundred million dollars in damages for reproductive theft and fraud," Danika said with a wicked grin. " I know he knows if we sue him he’ll win. But why waste so much time when he can just sgree. We draft a lawsuit that is so detailed and so damaging that even if he wins it will destroy his stock prices and ruin the merger he just closed."

"He will just laugh at us," I argued. "He knows you are a small-time lawyer Danika and he will crush you."

"Let him laugh," Danika insisted. "Jason is a businessman and he hates bad publicity more than he hates losing money. He will see the forty million as a cheap way to make the problem disappear quietly."

"And the one month?" I asked. "Why ask for that?"

"If he refuses the money which he might out of spite he will agree to the time to avoid the lawsuit," Danika reasoned. "And in that month you show him exactly what he is losing. You make him want you Chelley. You make yourself indispensable and irresistible and then when the thirty days are up you must have gathered some settlement and leave him begging."

"I don't want him to want me," I spat. "I want him to suffer."

"That is exactly how he suffers," Danika corrected. "By realizing he threw away the diamond to keep the stone. You make him regret everything and watch him fail to concentrate on Chloe."

My phone buzzed on the coffee table and the screen lit up with a message from Jason.

"Wherever you are hiding ensure you avail yourself at the estate in seven days with the signed papers. Failure to appear will result in immediate trouble. That evening will be my engagement ceremony to Chloe."

I stared at the message feeling the bile rise in my throat. He was getting engaged to my sister a week after throwing me out.

"He is celebrating," I whispered while showing the phone to Danika.

"Good," Danika stood up and walked to her desk. "Let him celebrate as it makes him arrogant. We are going to draft that ultimatum in six days Chelley. Trust me."

I looked at my friend who was ready to fight a giant with nothing but a slingshot and for the first time in hours I felt a spark of hope.

"Do it," I told her. "Draft the papers.”