Baby Daddy Roulette

Chapter 73

The courtroom is smaller than I expected.

In my mind, this moment loomed so large—the final confrontation, the public reckoning—that I imagined something grand. Marble columns. Dramatic lighting. The weight of justice made physical.

Instead: fluorescent bulbs, worn wooden benches, a judge who looks like she'd rather be anywhere else. Cassian sits at the defendant's table with his lawyers, wearing a suit that costs more than most people's rent. He doesn't look at me. Hasn't looked at me since we walked in.

Diane squeezes my arm. "Ready?"

"No. Let's do it anyway."

The trial unfolds over three brutal days.

Cassian's lawyers paint me as manipulative, unstable, opportunistic. They present a narrative where I seduced him, then destroyed him publicly for attention. Where I deliberately got pregnant by multiple men to create a scandal. Where my relationship with Axel and Mateo is proof of moral degradation rather than love.

I listen to strangers describe my life in terms that bear no resemblance to reality. Watch the jury's faces cycle through confusion, judgment, occasional sympathy. Feel Axel's hand tight on mine whenever I start to shake.

Character witnesses testify for both sides. Cassian's former teammates speak carefully, saying nothing damning but nothing supportive either—their silence is its own statement. My colleagues from the Sirens testify to my professionalism, my ethics, my immediate recusal when the relationship became serious.

Diane counters with documentation. The cheating—receipts, messages, witness testimony from the woman I found in his bed. The harassment campaign—Derek Hollins' confession, recorded and transcribed, admitting Cassian paid him to provoke me. The bribed doorman who admitted under oath that he was paid five thousand dollars to lie about seeing me enter Cassian's building. The fabricated evidence—hotel receipts with doctored timestamps, text messages that forensic analysis proved never existed.

The bribed clinic employee breaks on the stand. Under Diane's methodical cross-examination, she admits that Cassian's management paid her fifteen thousand dollars to access the DNA records before they were encrypted. The courtroom goes silent as she describes the transaction—cash, delivered to her apartment, in exchange for a printout she was never supposed to make.

"For what purpose?" Diane asks.

"He wanted to know the results. Before anyone else." She won't meet Cassian's eyes. "He said he needed leverage. Something to use if things went badly."

The word hangs in the courtroom. Leverage. Not truth, not justice—leverage. A weapon to use against a woman who dared to leave him, who dared to be happy without him.

Then the DNA results are entered into evidence.

The expert witness explains them clinically: Cassian Drummond shares no genetic material with any of the three children. His paternity claim is not just improbable—it's impossible. The conception window he alleged occurred when his own records show he was in another state entirely.

His entire lawsuit collapses in real time.

I watch his face as the expert testifies. Watch the mask finally crack—not into rage or defiance, but something emptier. A man confronting the fact that he destroyed himself over a lie he knew was a lie from the beginning.

He never believed he was the father. He just wanted to hurt me.

The judge's voice cuts through my thoughts. "Mr. Drummond, do you have anything to say before I render my ruling?"

Cassian stands. His lawyers try to stop him, but he waves them off. For the first time in three days, he looks directly at me.

"I don't know how it got this far." His voice is raw, stripped of the charm that used to be automatic. "I was angry. You left me, and you thrived, and everyone took your side. I wanted you to feel what I felt."

"Mr. Drummond—" his lawyer starts.

"I knew the children weren't mine. I knew the lawsuit was baseless." He laughs, hollow. "But I thought if I pushed hard enough, you'd crack. You'd lose everything like I did. Instead..." He gestures at the courtroom, at me, at the wreckage of his own making. "Instead I'm the one who lost."

The judge's expression is stone. "Is that a confession, Mr. Drummond?"

"It's the truth." He sits down heavily. "Not that it matters now."

The ruling is swift and devastating.

Case dismissed with prejudice. Sanctions against Cassian for filing false claims. His lawyer Harold Brennan referred to the state bar for ethical violations. Restraining order granted—Cassian is not to contact me, Axel, Mateo, or our children directly or through intermediaries.

"This court finds that Mr. Drummond pursued this lawsuit not in good faith, but as a campaign of harassment against the defendant and her family." The judge's voice carries the weight of finality. "Such abuse of the legal system will not be tolerated."

The gavel falls.

It's over.

Cassian remains seated as his lawyers gather papers around him. He looks hollowed out—the golden boy tarnished beyond recognition. I should feel triumphant. Vindicated. Something.

Instead I feel tired. So deeply tired.

Axel and Mateo meet me outside the courtroom. Diane is already fielding calls from journalists, but I ignore them. I walk straight into my partners' arms and let them hold me up.

"You did it," Mateo whispers into my hair.

"We did it." I pull back, look at both of them. "It's done. He can't touch us anymore."

"The restraining order," Axel says carefully. "It covers the children?"

"All of us. Any contact is a violation." I take a shaky breath. "The information he has—the DNA breakdown—he can't use it directly. If he releases it, he's breaking the order."

"And if he finds a way around it?" Mateo's eyes are dark with the worry that hasn't left him since Cassian's phone call. "Through someone else?"

"Then we deal with it." I take both their hands. "But today, we won. We beat him publicly, definitively, with the court record showing exactly what he did. No ambiguity. No doubt."

We walk out of the courthouse together, past the cameras and the questions we don't answer. Past the people who want a piece of our story, our pain, our victory.

I glance back once, through the glass doors. Cassian is still inside, alone at the defendant's table. His lawyers have left. The courtroom is emptying around him, court staff gathering papers, security waiting to close up.

He looks exactly like what he is: a man who destroyed himself rather than face reality. A man who had everything—talent, money, charm—and burned it all down because he couldn't stand losing.

I should feel pity. Maybe someday I will. Maybe someday I'll look back and see the broken person underneath the narcissism, the wound that made him so desperate to control and destroy.

Today, I just feel free.

The war isn't over. Not completely. The information exists—the DNA breakdown, which children belong to which father. Cassian knows it. The records exist somewhere, encrypted but not erased. The league is still watching, the ultimatum softened but not withdrawn.

But we won this battle. Publicly. Definitively. With a court record that shows exactly who Cassian Drummond is and what he tried to do to my family.

And right now, walking out into the sunlight with both my partners beside me, that's enough.