My breath hitched. I ripped the seal open, pulling out a stack of medical documents dated three years ago. My eyes scanned the medical jargon, searching for a summary, until they landed on a highlighted paragraph at the bottom of the second page:
Patient: Raymond Mendez. Diagnosis: Severe Azoospermia (Zero sperm count due to congenital genetic block). Prognosis: Permanent, irreversible sterility. Patient cannot biologically father children.
The paper slipped from my fingers, fluttering to the hardwood floor.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t process it. Three years ago? I had never gone to a fertility clinic three years ago. Lucy had gone alone to her appointments, or so I thought. She had taken the blame. She had absorbed my insults, my sneers, my public declarations that she was failing me as a wife. She had protected my fragile, arrogant male ego by letting me believe she was the problem.
But if I was permanently, irreversibly sterile… then how was Lucy pregnant now?
Before the horrific implications of that thought could fully take root, my phone rang. The caller ID displayed David’s name.
The rage that surged through me was primal. I answered it, my voice a demonic rasp. “You son of a bitch.”
There was a long pause on the other end. When David spoke, his voice lacked its usual arrogant, boardroom confidence. He sounded hollow. Depleted.
“Ray,” David said quietly. “I see you’ve met the baby.”
“You violated my life, David! You violated my trust! You slept with Valerie while I was paying for her life, while I was giving her millions! You stood in my office and told me to give her everything!” I screamed, tears finally spilling over my eyelids. “Did you look at me and laugh every single day?”
“I didn’t sleep with Valerie to hurt you, Ray,” David said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “In fact, I didn’t sleep with Valerie for pleasure at all. Valerie was an investment. An investment that she suggested.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Check the rest of the envelope, Ray,” David whispered. “You only read the medical report. Keep looking.”
With a shaking hand, I reached into the manila envelope again. My fingers brushed past the fertility report and pulled out a second document. It was a legally binding contract, stamped by a private notary, dated six months before I ever met Valerie at that architecture convention in Miami.
My eyes blurred as I read the headers:
FINANCIAL ASSET LIQUIDATION & TRANSFER AGREEMENT Party A: Valerie Towers Party B: David Silva (Mendez & Partners Architecture) Beneficiary: Lucy Mendez
