When You Finally Chose Us

Chapter 3

"Lorraine, why do you suddenly want a divorce? And why did Mia end up in the hospital out of nowhere?"

When Lucien got home that night, his face was crumpled in confusion.

"Where are Yvette and Cecily?"

"Cecily got scared when she got her shot today, so Yvette took her home early to rest."

As soon as the words left Lucien's mouth, he seemed to pick up on something off.

"Is this divorce thing related to Yvette? I have already told you, Yvette and I only have a sibling bond, nothing more!"

"Lucien, I'm sick of our life being crammed with five people all the time."

"Lorraine, what are you even going on about? Yvette is like my little sister! What's wrong with me looking out for her?"

I stared straight at Lucien, not bothering to answer him directly. "Cecily knew full well that Mia was deathly allergic to prawns. This morning, she tricked Mia into eating prawn crackers. Mia had a terrible reaction and almost went into shock. And where were you? You were off with Cecily, keeping her company."

"I... I had no idea Mia ate those crackers." All the color drained from Lucien's face in an instant.

I didn't say another word. I just slid the divorce agreement across the table right in front of him.

Lucien's gaze locked onto the divorce papers, his face darkening fast as he scowled, "Cut the crap and stop being unreasonable. Cecily is just a kid, and besides, Mia's fine now, right? I'm not agreeing to a divorce."

"Just sign it. I get full custody of Mia. You can keep the house, the cars, all of it."

"Like hell I will. There's no way I'm signing off on a divorce." With that, Lucien slammed the door and stormed out.

I stared blankly at the door he'd just stormed out through, my thoughts drifting.

Five years of marriage, and Lucien had never stormed off that furious before.

Truth be told, we barely fought in those five years.

On the rare occasions we did argue, Lucien always caved and apologized first, right away.

Ring!

My phone went off. It was my assistant, Seven.

"Mrs. Yorke, we have a huge problem! The contest officials just flagged our competition entry for plagiarism!"

"What?!"

"Someone turned in a super similar video before we submitted ours. And their official completion timestamp is earlier than ours too."

"Is it just a similar concept? That's super common in this industry. Why would they call it plagiarism?" My voice was thick with confusion.

My assistant paused for a second before speaking again, his tone grim. "They put together a full plagiarism breakdown. The plots of the two videos are almost identical, even down to tons of tiny little details."

I hung up the phone, reeling in disbelief.

That work was 100% my original creation. I built every single part of it from scratch, all on my own.

A similar concept I could understand, but identical plots and matching tiny details? That was impossible.

Suddenly, it hit me.

I'd talked through my entire concept for this new project with Lucien a while back.

Could he have leaked it?

I messaged my assistant right away.

Lorraine: Look up the team that submitted that similar entry, and send me every last detail you can dig up on their entire operation.

Assistant Seven: Mrs. Yorke, it's Lumina Creative, a new team that popped up this year. Their lead creator is Yvette Laurent.

Yvette Laurent. Of course, it had to be her. That snake in the grass.

I dialed Lucien's number right away.

"Lucien, did you tell Yvette about the script I discussed with you last time?"

"Yeah, Yvette said she was stuck on what to shoot, so I walked her through the whole thing, told her she could borrow a few ideas if she needed to."

I scoffed. "Borrow ideas? Do you have any idea Yvette is using my exact work to accuse me of plagiarism?"

"Lorraine, you must have this wrong. Yvette would never do something like that."

"Hmph, wrong? Lucien Yorke, you go tell Yvette I have full records of the entire script development process. Who's really plagiarizing who isn't nearly as open and shut as she seems to think."

I ended the call before he could get another word in.

I've always had a habit of documenting every step of my creative process.

This competition entry was no exception. I had records of everything, from the very first rough brainstorm to the final polished product, every step tagged with exact, unalterable creation timestamps.

Even though I wrapped up the final version later than their team did, the dates for my initial inspiration and finalized script were way earlier than theirs.

I fired off every last piece of that evidence to the contest organizers by email.

The official results wouldn't be announced until 9 a.m. the next day.

As long as that clock hadn't hit 9 a.m., the results weren't set in stone.