My mother-in-law sued me, accusing me of faking a pregnancy to steal my husband’s will. In the middle of the courtroom, she kicked me in the stomach to “prove” it. What she didn’t know was that the judge was my father.

Chapter 1: The Inhumane Lawsuit

The courtroom smelled of floor wax, stale coffee, and the suffocating scent of old fear. It was a smell I had never associated with my husband, Liam, but now, three weeks after his funeral, it was the only thing I could smell. It clung to the back of my throat, bitter and unyielding, much like the woman sitting across the aisle from me.

“Your Honor,” Victoria Sterling‘s lawyer boomed, his voice echoing off the high mahogany walls of the superior court. He was a man named Mr. Thorne, wearing a suit that shimmered under the fluorescent lights, costing more than my entire college education. “My client has irrefutable evidence that Ms. Sophie represents a fraud of the highest order. We assert that she is, in fact, infertile. That belly she is parading around is nothing more than a prosthetic—a ‘Moonbump’—designed to elicit sympathy and steal the Sterling family fortune.