The entire ballroom fell into a dead, suffocating silence. Guests in the front row stood up from their gold chairs, leaning forward to look at the bleeding waitress kneeling beside the billionaire groom.
Evelyn: She is lying! Marcus, don't listen to that crazy waitress!
Arthur: Security! Drag that woman and her child out to the street immediately!
Marcus: Nobody touches her! If anyone steps within five feet of Clara, I will personally throw them through those glass doors!
Marcus gently wrapped his arms around both his weeping daughter and the injured waitress, pulling them into a tight, protective embrace against his chest.
Marcus: My daughter... you're safe now, both of you.
Lily: Daddy, my head hurts from crying...
Marcus: Shh, sweetie. Daddy's got you. Nobody is ever going to hurt you or your mommy again.
Evelyn pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, her white wedding gown rumpled and stained with dust from the marble floor. Her face was twisted in pure, unbridled malice as she glared at Clara.
Evelyn: Clara Vance was a surrogate, Marcus! We paid her fifty thousand dollars four years ago to carry a child for our estate trust fund!
Clara: I was never a surrogate, Evelyn! I was Marcus’s fiancée before you paid off the hospital doctors to frame me for theft!
Marcus: Clara... is that what happened four years ago? You didn't run away with my family's money?
Clara: I never touched a single dollar of your family's money, Marcus. Four years ago, when I went into labor at St. Jude's Hospital, Evelyn showed up in my room with two security guards.
Lily: The mean lady took me away in a black car, Daddy!
Clara: She told me my baby died during delivery, Marcus. And then she had her father's lawyers issue a fake restraining order against me so I couldn't come near your mansion!
Marcus felt a cold wave of pure, uncontrollable rage surge through his veins. He turned his head slowly toward Evelyn and Arthur, his jaw clenching tight.
Marcus: Arthur... did you forge a restraining order against the mother of my child?
Arthur: Marcus, listen to reason! Your grandfather’s will explicitly stated that you had to produce a biological heir before your thirtieth birthday to claim the fifty-million-dollar Sterling estate!
Marcus: My thirtieth birthday was last month!
Arthur: Exactly! And Clara was a simple schoolteacher with no social standing! If you married her, our two family firms could never have completed the merger!
Clara: Look at my apron pocket, Marcus. I kept the original hospital birth record hidden inside for four years.
Clara reached into her pink uniform apron, pulling out a folded, yellowed document stamped with a live state seal and the blue ink footprint of a newborn infant.
Marcus: Hand it to me, Clara.
Marcus unfolded the paper under the bright daylight. His eyes scanned down the first page, locking onto the biological registry names stamped at the bottom: Mother: Clara Vance. Father: Marcus Sterling. Child: Lily Sterling.
Marcus: The original birth certificate... signed by the chief of pediatrics at St. Jude's.
Evelyn: That paper is a fake! She printed it in a basement!
Marcus: It has the live raised state seal on the paper, Evelyn! You can't fake a raised state seal!