PART 1
“Pack your things, baby-making machine… this house was never yours.”
Theresa’s voice echoed through St. Agnes Church in the upscale Munich district of Bogenhausen, even before the priest had finished blessing my husband’s coffin.
I stood beside Julian’s coffin, one hand on my eight-months-pregnant belly and the other clutching the cross he had placed in my hand on our wedding day. Only four days had passed since the accident on the country road toward Lake Starnberg. Four days since a police officer had knocked on the door of our house in Grünwald and told me that Julian’s car had plunged off a cliff.
Julian Weber was no ordinary man. He owned one of Germany’s most important technology companies. His face appeared in business magazines, he spoke at major conferences, and he signed multi-million-dollar contracts with banks and hospitals. But to me, he was the man who crept barefoot into the kitchen at two in the morning, searching for sweet pastries—the man who spoke to our unborn child as if the baby could already answer him.
Theresa, my mother-in-law, had never accepted me.
In her eyes, I was always just “the little elementary school teacher,” the girl from a working-class neighborhood who had somehow infiltrated a family with a powerful name. Her younger daughter, Franziska, treated me the same way. Every family meal became a silent humiliation, wrapped in elegant words: my dress was “too plain,” my accent “too ordinary,” and they hoped my baby would “take after the Webers more.”
But as long as Julian lived, no one dared to touch me.
Now he lay in a dark wooden coffin covered with white lilies, and they smiled as if the funeral were just another business meeting.
Theresa approached me with a yellow envelope in her hand. Her heels clicked sharply and coldly on the marble floor.
“Here’s the truth,” she said, holding up some papers for everyone to see. “A DNA test. The child isn’t my son’s.”
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Immediately, the crowd began to whisper. Businesspeople, politicians, relatives, longtime employees—everyone turned to me as if I had committed a crime.
“That’s a lie,” I managed, but my voice broke.
Theresa chuckled softly.
“My son died, but he wasn’t a fool. We knew what you were all along. An opportunist. A nobody who tried to trap him with another man’s child.”
Franziska stepped closer. Before I could move, she grabbed my left hand. Her fingernails dug into my skin.
“And this isn’t yours either.”
She ripped my wedding ring off so hard that it scraped against my finger. The ring fell into her palm like a trophy.
“Look at yourself,” Franziska said, showing it to everyone. “A widow, poor and pregnant with a bastard.”
My legs trembled. I felt my son stir inside me, as if even he could hear her cruelty.
Theresa placed the forged documents on Julian’s coffin and leaned toward me.
“You’re leaving the house today. The accounts are frozen. The cars, the properties, the company… everything goes back to the real family.”
I stared at the coffin, wishing I would wake up from this nightmare. That morning, before Julian left, he had said something strange to me.
“No matter what happens, trust Arthur. I’ve already taken care of everything.”
Arthur was his lawyer.
But Arthur wasn’t there.
Theresa raised her hand and signaled to two security guards.
“Get her out before she makes any more of a scene.”
Then the huge church doors suddenly flew open.
The noise was so loud that everyone froze.
A man in a gray suit walked down the center aisle. It was Arthur Salcedo, Julian’s lawyer. Two people followed him, each carrying a black briefcase and a portable screen.
His voice was firm and cold.
“On the strict orders of Mr. Julian Weber, no funeral will take place until this video has been shown.”
Theresa smiled proudly, as if she thought it was a tribute to her.
But when my husband’s face appeared on the screen and he spoke the first sentence, my mother-in-law turned deathly pale.
I couldn’t believe what was about to happen.
