Chapter 8 - THE PATERNITY TRAP
The downtown office of Gable Brokerage Group sat on the fourteenth floor of a glass tower on 14th Street.
By three o'clock that afternoon, Benedict was sitting behind his massive mahogany desk, his hair wild, his eyes bloodshot, wearing an old gym sweatshirt he had found in his car trunk before it was repossessed.
Across from him sat Douglas Sterling—a predatory, high-priced divorce attorney who smelled of cheap cigars and stale coffee.
“It’s ironclad, Ben,” Sterling said, tapping the leather folio Benedict had brought from the hospital. “She signed it before the surgery. Uncontested divorce. Property division waived. The moment this is filed with the Fulton County clerk, she can’t touch a dime of your brokerage profits.”
Benedict took a shaky sip from a bottle of bourbon he had pulled from his credenza. “What about the accounts? The bank says the corporate account was emptied!”
“Julian Thorne took twelve million this morning,” Sterling frowned, checking his legal pad. “We’ll file an emergency injunction against Thorne. But as far as your wife is concerned, you’re free. You keep your company. You keep your name.”
The heavy frosted-glass doors of the boardroom swung open without a knock.
Benedict leapt out of his chair. “Who the hell told you you could—”
He stopped dead.
I walked into the room, followed by Arthur Vance and two corporate attorneys from King & Spalding—the most prestigious, terrifying law firm in the Southeast.
Benedict’s bourbon glass slipped from his fingers, shattering across the hardwood floor, dark amber liquid soaking into the rug.
“Flo... Florence?” he stammered, backing into his leather chair. “You’re... you’re walking?”
“I am,” I said, sitting down at the head of the conference table. My lawyers took their seats on either side of me, opening thick black binders filled with hundreds of pages of documentation.
Sterling cleared his throat, trying to regain his footing. “Mrs. Gable. I represent your husband. You have no legal standing to enter these premises. Furthermore, you signed a binding property separation agreement two days ago. My client owes you nothing.”
Arthur Vance tossed a document onto the center of the table.
“That document was signed under duress thirty minutes before major cranial neurosurgery,” Arthur said, his voice ringing with aristocratic authority. “The attending anesthesiologist has already submitted an affidavit confirming that Mrs. Gable had received pre-operative sedatives twenty minutes prior to signature. The waiver is legally void ab initio. It isn't worth the toilet paper it’s printed on.”
Sterling blinked, his face falling as he glanced at the medical affidavit.
“Even so!” Benedict shouted, his voice cracking with desperate rage. “This company is mine! Gable Brokerage Group is in my name! You can’t take what I built with my own hands!”
My senior attorney, a woman named Eleanor Vance, leaned forward.
“Mr. Gable, allow me to enlighten you on the corporate structure of Gable Brokerage Group,” Eleanor said coldly. “Every commercial lease your firm executed over the past seven years was backstopped by Gable Trust Holdings. The nine-million-dollar credit facility you used to operate this office? Backed entirely by your wife’s personal inheritance. The building we are currently sitting in? Owned by Oakhaven Commercial Partners—a subsidiary of your wife’s trust.”
She slid a formal notice of termination across the glass.
“Your commercial broker’s license has been suspended by the Georgia Real Estate Commission pending an investigation into eighteen million dollars of fraudulent commingling of funds with Julian Higgins,” Eleanor continued. “Your firm is insolvent. The sheriff has already locked the doors downstairs. You have fifteen minutes to vacate these premises.”
Benedict looked at Eleanor, then at Arthur, and finally at me.
His arrogance collapsed completely. He dropped to his knees, crawling across the broken glass and spilled bourbon toward my chair, reaching out with trembling, filthy hands.
“Florence... please,” he wept, tears carving pale tracks through the dirt on his cheeks. “I was sick. I was out of my mind with stress. I didn't know what I was doing! Rosalind poisoned me! She tricked me!”
“She certainly did,” I replied softly.
“She gave me a son, Flo!” he sobbed, clutching at my slacks. “A man needs a son! You couldn’t understand what it felt like to watch every other man have a family while I had nothing! I only did it for the family!”
I leaned down, looking him squarely in his bloodshot eyes.
“Benedict,” I whispered. “Leo isn't your son.”
He froze. “What?”
“Leo is Julian Thorne’s biological child,” I said, dropping the certified DNA test onto his chest. “And you have non-obstructive azoospermia. You were born sterile. You have known it for four years.”
Benedict looked at the paper on his chest. His hands shook so violently the paper rattled like dry leaves in a winter storm.
“No...” he gasped, his breath hitching in his throat. “No, that’s... that’s a lie. The IVF clinic...”
“The IVF clinic told you four years ago,” I said. “And you let me endure three rounds of agonizing hormone therapy, eighteen months of depression, and a decade of self-hatred because you were too cowardly to admit that your body was broken.”
Benedict stared at me, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. The monstrous depth of his own cruelty, vanity, and stupidity finally hit him all at once, crushing him beneath its weight.
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“You didn't want a family, Benedict,” I said, rising to my feet and stepping over his trembling hands. “You wanted an ornament to stroke your pathetic ego. And now, you have nothing.”
***
