The faint smile on my face froze.
Erin was supposed to be at Starry Kindergarten, an elite school that cost over 100 thousand dollars a year, where the children ate meals prepared by expensive nutritionists from abroad.
Why on earth was she enrolled at some no-name daycare?
A wave of uncontrollable panic and rage surged through me.
I pulled up the dashcam app again and played the rest of the footage from that morning.
On the screen, Harper drove Jodie straight to the grand gates of Starry Kindergarten.
"Go on in, Jodie. Make sure to say hi to your teacher." Harper draped Erin's platinum-tier school ID around the girl's neck.
Then, she turned the car into a dilapidated alley a block away and pulled up in front of a place called Sunflower Daycare. The front gate was covered in rust.
When Harper turned around, the warmth on her face was gone, replaced by sharp impatience. "Erin Spence, get out. I'll pick you up tonight. And remember, don't you dare tell your dad about any of this."
Clutching her backpack, my four-year-old daughter looked timidly at the dark entrance of the daycare and whispered, "Mommy, I don't want to go in there. It smells bad, and the food is yucky—"
"Shut up! I won't spoil you! Get in there now!" Harper snapped.
Erin flinched, tears welling in her eyes.
She shakily pushed the door open and walked into that crumbling yard all by herself.
As I watched Erin's small, helpless back, I squeezed my fists until my knuckles turned white. I had to fight the urge to smash the digital tablet screen. How could Harper do this?
Erin was born premature. Her health had always been fragile. For the first three years of her life, I never let her out of my sight. And Harper dared to throw her into a place like that? This was her own flesh and blood!
I took a deep breath to force myself to stay calm.
Suddenly, an exclamation mark flashed on the screen, showing that the video file was missing.
Harper had deleted it.
That malicious woman!
Not only was she cheating, but she was using the money I earned to provide for her secret child while dumping my biological daughter in the slums.
Hearing the water running in the bathroom, I wanted nothing more than to storm in and drag her out.
But I held back.
Confronting her now would only tip her off, giving her time to hide assets or destroy more evidence.
I wasn't going to let this shameless couple get off that easy.
For the next few days, I lived a double life.
By day, I went to work as usual. I even managed to react calmly to Harper's fake displays of affection despite feeling disgusted.
Behind the scenes, I hired the best private investigator in the city to dig into Caleb's background.
I spent nights pulling every financial statement and chat log Harper had from the last few years. I even paid a specialist to recover the deleted dashcam footage.
In less than three days, a thick report landed in my inbox.
Reading through it, I let out a cold, hollow laugh.
At the very top was a DNA test result that proved that Jodie was Harper's biological daughter.
I suddenly remembered the year before we got married, when Harper insisted on going abroad for a study program and forbade me from visiting. She must have given birth then.
No wonder Jodie looked familiar. She was the spitting image of Harper as a child.
The next file made my blood boil even hotter.
It was an enrollment transfer agreement from Starry Kindergarten, and my name was boldly signed at the bottom!
Harper must have used my fingerprint while I was asleep and forged my signature to hand over a 300-thousand-dollar placement to Jodie.
But it didn't stop there. I discovered that over the last two years, Harper had siphoned nearly two million dollars from our accounts under the guise of "bad investments" and "business networking".
Every single cent of that money had gone toward a down payment on a luxury apartment for Caleb in the city center.
I backed up every piece of evidence and called my lawyer, Aiden Chapman.
"Mr. Chapman, I need a divorce agreement drafted. I want her to leave with absolutely nothing. And prepare a lawsuit. I'm suing her for embezzlement, marital asset transfer, and document forgery."
