Chapter 448: Chapter 448: Truly Not Laura Jennings’s Biological Son
But it was too late.
Nathaniel Sloan casually raised his hand, and the lawyer pressed the play button.
"Ms. Jennings, this sort of thing is illegal! We won’t do it!" a doctor’s voice rang out from the recording.
"Do you have any idea who I am? To hell with the law, I am the law! If you don’t do it, you can pack up your things and wait to be fired!" Laura Jennings retorted fiercely.
"But we really can’t do this..." a nurse replied hesitantly. "Mrs. Sloan watches her baby very closely. How are we supposed to help you steal the child?"
"Shut up! Ahhhh, shut up! I told you not to call that bitch Mrs. Sloan! I am Mrs. Sloan!"
On the surveillance footage, the doctor and nurse were so frightened by her outburst that they snapped their mouths shut.
The crowd at the scene was stunned. "Laura Jennings really has been a crazy, neurotic mess for decades. What did Ethan Sloan ever see in her?"
"She’s so hideously vile..."
"That’s not the point! The point is, the doctor and nurse said Laura wanted them to steal Miranda Lancaster’s baby?"
"Stealing a baby... Could Mr. Sloan really be Miranda’s son?!"
"You can’t claim this footage is faked. It clearly has the hospital’s logo, the time, and the location. Plus, Laura looks much younger here than she does now."
"Besides, a quick forensic check would reveal if the video had been tampered with."
The footage continued to play.
"I’ll give you money! One million! Surely two million is enough!"
"You have your own child..." the doctor argued.
"I don’t care! I want that bitch’s son! Ahhhhh! If you don’t listen to me, I’ll have my husband fire every last one of you!"
"But..." the nurse started.
"Your parents are still living back in your hometown, aren’t they?"
"Ms. Jennings! Are you threatening us with our parents?" the doctor demanded.
The video abruptly stopped there, fading into the static snow of the screen with a loud BZZZ.
The crowd stared at Laura in dumbfounded disbelief.
Laura shook her head like a madwoman. "No! No! It’s all a forgery! It’s fake!"
"Don’t be in such a rush, Ms. Jennings. There’s more," the lawyer said, playing the next video.
Whatever deal the medical staff had struck with Laura was unknown, but two days later in the footage, the nurse walked over cautiously, her face full of fear, holding a baby boy.
"Ms. Jen—no, Mrs. Sloan," the nurse stammered. "We... we did what you asked. When will you wire us the money?"
"Fine. Take the money and get lost."
The doctor swallowed hard. "Although the baby is only a month old, Miranda will definitely recognize her own son. If she finds out later, then... then we..."
Laura flashed a sinister smile. "That’s none of your concern. Now get out, both of you!"
"No! No! The video is fake! I don’t know anything about this! I don’t know!" Laura roared, screaming until her voice was hoarse.
Chairman Lancaster’s face darkened. He hadn’t expected Nathaniel to have kept such an ace up his sleeve. The veins on the back of his hands bulged as he cursed under his breath, "Damn it!"
Yvonne Lancaster was as anxious as a cat on a hot tin roof. "What do we do? What do we do now? They all suspect the Lancaster family. This is bad."
Chairman Lancaster, however, was much calmer. "The video only shows Laura Jennings, not the baby. As long as we insist that we had already picked up Miranda’s son beforehand, and that the doctor and nurse just grabbed a random baby boy to fool Laura, we’ll be fine."
Hearing this, Yvonne breathed a sigh of relief.
Across the room, Laura’s eyes were bloodshot and nearly bulging from her skull as she suffered a complete meltdown. "No! Ethan! Say something! This isn’t Miranda’s son! Nathaniel is my son! Yes, he’s mine!"
But no one paid her any attention.
Even Ethan Sloan was currently preoccupied with figuring out how to prove his total ignorance in the matter.
As for Laura Jennings? Twenty-seven years ago, he had indeed liked her, but he had only liked her feigned gentleness and submissiveness. Now? Forget it. He already had Thea.
Laura stumbled back two steps, growing even more unhinged. She wondered why no one was helping her. Why?!
"It’s fake! It’s all fake!" Laura shrieked.
The lawyer couldn’t be bothered to entertain her and moved on to the next clip. This time, it wasn’t surveillance footage. Instead, it was a video recorded by the husband and wife more than twenty years later, speaking directly to the camera.
"We used to be a doctor and a nurse... For two million and the safety of our family, we did something deeply unethical..."
In the video, the couple explicitly stated Laura Jennings’s name and outlined the complicated relationship between Laura, Ethan Sloan, and Miranda Lancaster.
"Laura Jennings also gave birth to a child, but we don’t know where her baby went..." the couple confessed in the video.
"Then, she forced us to bring Miranda’s baby to her.
"For the money, we agreed, acting against our conscience. I know we’re worse than animals for what we did, which is why we’ve decided to make this public...
"Laura deleted most of the surveillance footage from back then, but we managed to save two of the recordings.
"We know that the current Mr. Nathaniel Sloan is the infant we swapped all those years ago... We are so, so sorry...
"It wasn’t until we had a child of our own that we finally understood the devastation Miranda must have felt..."
When the video ended, the crowd fell silent.
This couple—the doctor and nurse from back then—were hardly good people to begin with, having stolen a baby for money. And their desire to expose the truth over twenty years later wasn’t born out of some sudden twinge of conscience.
Rather, it was because their only son was in poor health and had broken his leg during a school activity. The couple, terrified and resorting to praying to every god they could think of, began to suspect that the karma from stealing the baby hadn’t come for them, but had instead struck down their innocent child.
On top of that, they had heard rumors about Nathaniel’s miserable childhood. Laura had abused him, starved him, locked him in the basement, and even secretly broken his leg, taking years for him to fully heal.
Whenever the couple thought of their own son—who was also frail, had a poor appetite, was dangerously thin, and had suffered a broken leg—they felt it was inescapable karmic retribution. The suffering Nathaniel had endured as a child was now being mirrored by their son.
But *they* were the ones who had stolen the baby! Tossing and turning over the matter, they eventually decided to expose the truth for their son’s sake.
Yet, not long after recording the video, the couple had died in a car accident.
Ransacking the house later on, their son had found the USB drive. After seeing its contents, including the surveillance footage from over two decades ago, he knew there was more to the story. As a result, he suspected his parents’ deaths had been no accident.
The venue grew deathly quiet.
Was there any evidence more concrete than this? No.
There was surveillance footage, witness testimony, physical evidence, and a direct confession from the very doctor and nurse who had stolen the baby. The footage had clearly captured Laura’s face and recorded her voice. Coupled with the numerous paternity tests confirming that Nathaniel and Laura had no biological relationship, the truth was glaringly obvious.
Nathaniel Sloan was definitely not Laura Jennings’s biological son!
He was the baby Laura had stolen, yet he was the one who had borne the brunt of her sins!