Chapter 4 - The Woman Natalie Was Hiding
Natalie contacted me two days later.
Not through Sebastian.
Not through his chief of staff.
Through a message sent to a secure email address Marian had created for the case.
I know you think I am your enemy.
I may be the only person who can prove what Sebastian is capable of.
Marian wanted to ignore it.
Griffin wanted to investigate the sender before replying.
But I could not stop staring at the words.
Natalie knew things.
Maybe she had helped Sebastian build the trap.
Maybe she was only trying to save herself.
Or maybe, like me, she had finally understood that Sebastian’s version of love came with conditions.
We arranged the meeting in a lawyer’s office with security nearby.
Natalie arrived wearing a gray coat, no makeup, and an expression stripped of every bit of glamour I had seen in the photographs.
She looked frightened.
“I did not know about you at first,” she said.
I sat across from her, keeping both hands folded over my stomach.
“You knew he was married.”
“Yes.”
“You knew I was pregnant.”
Her eyes lowered.
“Yes.”
“And you still helped him.”
“I thought I was handling a separation.”
I almost laughed.
“You thought arranging fake psychiatric records was separation?”
Natalie flinched.
“I did not know the records were fake until recently.”
“You worked with Dr. Markham.”
“I arranged appointments. I booked hotels. I handled travel. Sebastian told me Markham was helping you manage a difficult pregnancy.”
“And you believed him?”
“I believed what I wanted to believe.”
The honesty stopped me.
Natalie reached into her bag and removed a small encrypted drive.
“Sebastian has done this before,” she said.
The room went still.
“What?”
“There was another woman. Before you. His former fiancée, Celeste Rowe.”
I knew the name.
Sebastian had once mentioned her casually, years ago.
He said they ended things because she “could not handle the pressure” of his life.
Natalie’s voice shook.
“She did not leave because she could not handle it. She left because he tried to have her placed in a private treatment center after she discovered financial fraud in one of his companies.”
My blood ran cold.
“He did this to her too?”
“Not exactly. She escaped before he could finish. But he destroyed her reputation. He told investors she was unstable. He told friends she had become obsessed with him. She disappeared from New York.”
Natalie slid the drive toward Marian.
“It contains emails, hotel recordings, invoice records, and internal messages from Sebastian’s executive office. It proves he was planning to move you to Connecticut after Audrey’s birth.”
“Why give this to me?” I asked.
Natalie looked down.
“Because he told me Audrey would eventually live with us.”
The words made my body go still.
“He said what?”
“He said once you recovered, you would understand it was best to step back.”
I pressed one hand against my stomach.
Audrey kicked sharply.
Natalie’s eyes filled with tears.
“I thought he loved me,” she whispered. “But he was never planning a life with me. He was planning a life where every woman stayed useful until she became inconvenient.”
Marian picked up the drive.
“Are you willing to testify?”
Natalie looked terrified.
Then she nodded.
“Yes.”
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For the first time, Sebastian’s carefully built system had a crack.
And it came from the woman he thought he controlled.
