Page 165 of What Goes Around

She said she wanted privacy.

She did not stop posting.

It was exactly how it had happened in my past life.

Back then, I had been too deep in my own heartbreak to question it. Too broken to analyze. Too distracted by pain to see structure. But now I had distance. Time. Perspective.

And it didn’t feel right.

Nothing suspicious appeared in her phone clone. No payments. No obvious conversations. No trace of planning.

So I asked Amy.

“Can you get into her laptop?”

Amy did not hesitate. “Give me one evening.”

She delivered in less than two hours.

“Her phone is clean,” Amy said over speaker. “But she has another email account. One she doesn’t log into on her phone.”

“What’s in it?”

Payment confirmations.

Invoices.

Conversations.

She had paid for fake ultrasound images. High-quality. Professionally edited. Medical formatting. Correct terminology. Realistic detail.

She had paid for a forged DNA test report.

None of it was cheap.

Whoever she hired knew exactly how to make it believable.

She had paid enough to make it convincing.

The miscarriage had never been an accident.

It had always been part of the plan.

She had intended to use the baby to bind Nick. To force proximity. To build a relationship out of obligation. And when that failed, she pivoted to loss. To sympathy. To tragedy.

And she monetized it all.

The final confirmation came from my clone of her phone.

A message to Marissa.

“I thought the baby would make him stay. He still doesn’t want me. I did everything right.”

I locked my phone, leaned back against the couch, and closed my eyes.

Some people didn’t just lie.

They built entire lives on it.