Karma Wears My Wedding Ring

The Trap Snaps Shut

Six armed judicial police officers marched through the open front doors, followed closely by Dante in a sharp black suit and Ryder standing tall right behind him.

Zane dropped his glass and bolted toward the back patio doors, trying to escape through the garden.

Before he could take three steps, Ryder moved like a shadow, grabbing the back of Zane’s collar and slamming him chest-first onto the dining table. The wood groaned loudly as two officers immediately snapped steel handcuffs around Zane’s wrists.

"What is going on here?!" Jaxson shouted, his face pale as he stepped back from the television screen and tried to put on his authoritative CEO demeanor. "Officers, this is a private residence! Who gave you a warrant to barge into my home?"

I stepped out from behind the velvet dining drapes, holding my phone steady in one hand so the entire executive board chat could watch every second of his downfall live, and holding the black Swiss ledger in the other.

"I called them, Jaxson," I said calmly, walking into the center of the living room.

Jaxson’s eyes locked onto me, his expression twisting from shock to desperate confusion. "Lyra? Where did you get that fake video on the TV? Did someone hack our network to try and ruin our marriage?!"

Even with the video still playing behind him and the police standing in our foyer, his first instinct was still to lie to my face.

"A fake video?" I laughed coldly, tossing Vesper’s confiscated phone onto the glass coffee table right in front of Sienna. "Ask your pregnant secretary if that’s her phone. Half an hour ago, Sienna ordered your sister Vesper and a hired thug to throw our four-year-old daughter into the Seine at Pier 4!"

Jaxson’s head snapped toward Sienna, his eyes bulging with disbelief. "What is she talking about?! Tell me she's lying, Sienna! You told me Vesper only took Nyx to the amusement park so I could get Lyra to sign the villa papers!"

Sienna trembled violently from head to toe, her knees giving out as she collapsed onto the carpet beside the spilled champagne. "Jaxson! Jaxson, listen to me! I only did it for us and our baby! If that little girl stayed around, Lyra would use her to demand half the company when you divorced her!"

"Shut up! Shut your mouth!" Jaxson roared, his handsome face contorting in pure rage and terror as he realized the police were recording every word she said. He lunged forward and kicked Sienna squarely in the shoulder, sending her sprawling across the wet marble tiles. "You crazy b***h! Nyx is my flesh and blood! When did I ever tell you to hurt my daughter?!"

Sienna shrieked in pain, clutching her stomach as she glared up at him with venomous hatred. "Your flesh and blood?! Less than two hours ago in your office, you called her a useless little girl and said you couldn't wait to kick both her and Lyra out onto the streets without a penny!"

"Don't listen to her, Lyra!" Jaxson spun around and dropped straight to his knees in front of me, grabbing the hem of my coat with both hands as tears poured down his face on cue. "Sweetheart, you know how much I love you and Nyx! This woman seduced me at a company banquet when I had too much to drink and then threatened to ruin my reputation if I didn't play along! Wait... where is Nyx right now? Is she hurt?!"

I looked down at the man kneeling at my feet. Back when I suffered from gastric bleeding in the hospital to build our company, he had knelt and cried just like this. For six years, I had mistaken his cheap, crocodile tears for deep devotion.

"Nyx is completely safe under Ryder’s protection," I said, pulling the hem of my coat out of his grasp as if his touch were filth. "And Vesper is already in police custody at the pier, confessing every single detail of how she and Sienna planned the kidnapping."

The lead police captain stepped forward, holding up an official arrest warrant. "Sienna Laurent, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted murder of a minor. Take her away!"

"No! Jaxson, save me! I'm carrying your son!" Sienna screamed hysterically as two female officers hauled her off the floor and dragged her toward the door. "If I go to prison, I'm taking you down with me! Officers, check his safe upstairs! He forged Lyra’s father's signature to steal her parents' house for my brother, and he embezzled twenty-eight million dollars from the company into a Swiss account!"

Jaxson’s face turned the color of ash. "She's lying! She's out of her mind!"

"We don't need to check the safe upstairs," Dante spoke up smoothly, stepping beside me and taking the black ledger and the three offshore bank tokens from my hand to pass them directly to the financial crimes inspector. "Mrs. Murphy already retrieved the original ledger from the wall safe, which happens to be unlocked using Miss Laurent’s birthday as the passcode. Every illegal transfer you and Zane made over the past six months is documented inside."

In the corner, Zane slumped against the dining table in total defeat, his face buried in his cuffed hands.

"Even if I transferred funds, it's my own company!" Jaxson scrambled backward onto his feet, his eyes bloodshot and wild with cornered desperation as he pointed at the leather folder under my arm. "Ten minutes ago, Lyra voluntarily signed the equity transfer agreement and stamped it with my seal! Legally, I own one hundred percent of the company now, so transferring my own company’s money isn't embezzlement!"

Dante adjusted his glasses and let out a low, mocking chuckle. "Did you actually read the middle pages of the contract you just signed and stamped, Mr. Murphy?"

Jaxson froze, a sudden chill creeping up his spine. "What do you mean?"

"The equity transfer you drafted was replaced before Mrs. Murphy came home," Dante explained calmly, opening a duplicate copy of the folder. "What you just signed and stamped in front of witnesses is a legally binding personal debt assumption contract for the thirty million dollars in shell-company liabilities you created, along with an infidelity clause that forfeits every cent of your personal real estate, cars, and savings directly to your daughter's irrevocable trust fund."

"That's impossible! That's fraud!" Jaxson lunged toward Dante, his hands clawing at the air before two officers grabbed his arms and pinned him down. "Lyra! We've been married for six years! Look at everything we built together! You can't do this to me!"

I held up my phone, turning the screen toward his face so he could see the live corporate broadcast where all twelve board members and the bank directors were watching with furious expressions.

"Our marriage ended the night you stood in a hospital hallway with your mistress and lied to my face," I said, my voice echoing clearly through the quiet room. "Enjoy paying off your thirty million dollars of debt from a prison cell, Jaxson."

Just as the officers clicked the handcuffs around Jaxson’s wrists and dragged him screaming toward the front door, my phone vibrated with an incoming emergency call from Kaelen at St. Jude’s Hospital.

I tapped answer and put the phone to my ear. "Kaelen? The police just arrested them all."

"Lyra, listen to me carefully," Kaelen’s voice on the other end of the line was tense and urgent. "While running a deeper blood cross-match on the samples from Jaxson’s hospital file tonight, I discovered something terrifying in our hospital archives from four years ago—the night you gave birth to Nyx!"