My parents murmured excuses. I ignored them. I opened a photograph the hospital nurse had shown me seven years earlier: termination of parental rights. His signature, sloppy but unmistakable. He didn’t just talk. He signed away his rights. Laughing.
This time Bradley’s face drained pale. He knew exactly how bad this looked. Thousands of witnesses. Everything recorded.
Maria stepped forward. Her voice shook but held iron.
“There’s more. Connor has done this before. Twice.”
The room froze.
She explained that he had contacted her Denver law firm last year about another custody case. Same pattern. He vanished when the child was born. Returned when the mother received a financial settlement. Tried to sue for a share. The firm declined after seeing his history.
Then she said there was another case before that, in Nevada. Another mother. Another attempt to use fatherhood as leverage. He bragged in emails that he knew how to turn kids into lifetime insurance.
People gasped. Someone whispered the word “predator.” Maria looked at Bradley.
“And you came in here representing him. Did you bother to ask anything?”
Bradley’s composure cracked. He saw a comment scroll across the livestream: “I am sending this to the state bar.” And another: “That lawyer is in serious trouble.”
He cleared his throat weakly.
“I was unaware of those previous matters. If true, everything will need to be reconsidered.”
He reached for his folder, but James stepped in front of him.
“Not yet. There’s something else.”
Maria pulled a flash drive from her bag.
“When Connor came to our firm,” she said, “we dug into the hospital records. He told us he was there the night Lily was born, that Cara shut him out. We requested security footage.”
She walked to the television and plugged in the drive. The screen flickered. A grainy hallway appeared. The timestamp matched Lily’s birthday. A little after midnight. There he was—a younger Connor stumbling down the corridor with another man, cups in hand, laughing, shoving each other like this was a bar crawl.