The Fake Heart Made of Gold (The love that lied)

Chapter 3

Lauren Chase was undeniably one of the most beautiful women in the country.

Even at forty, years of expensive skincare routines, personal trainers, and the kind of lifestyle only real money could buy had kept her looking like she was still in her late twenties. Age hadn't taken anything from her. If anything, it had added a depth to her beauty that younger women simply couldn't compete with. The kind of magnetic, mature allure that made men lose their train of thought mid sentence just from being in the same room as her.

With that face and that level of fame, men had been throwing themselves at her for years. Jason knew that better than anyone.

So he didn't expect her to just come out and confess.

Women like Lauren didn't confess. They deflected, they charmed, they made you feel crazy for even asking the question.

But the paternity test didn't care about charm.

A lab report didn't lie.

And sure enough, Lauren didn't admit a thing.

"Where is this coming from? Since when did you turn into the jealous type?" She shook her head with a light, almost pitying smile on her lips. "You're underestimating yourself, Jason. And you're underestimating me."

"Maybe I am." Jason's voice was flat, all the warmth drained out of it. "But lately I can't shake this feeling that you've been sleeping with other men behind my back."

The smile on Lauren's face flickered. Something cold and sharp passed through her eyes for just a fraction of a second before she covered it up.

"That's a disgusting thing to say." Her tone shifted, the playfulness gone. "A joke is one thing, but don't cross the line. You keep talking like that, and I'm going to get seriously angry."

So that's how you want to play it.

Jason watched her face carefully.

You're not going to admit a single thing until I shove the proof right under your nose.

He was done circling around it.

"Lauren Chase, then how do you explain this?" Jason pulled the wrinkled paternity test from his bag and slid it across the table.

Lauren picked it up. Her eyes moved down the page slowly, scanning every line until they reached the conclusion at the bottom.

NOT BIOLOGICALLY RELATED.

The smile on her face didn't disappear all at once. It froze, like someone had pressed pause on a video. Her jaw tightened. Her fingers curled around the edges of the paper until her knuckles turned pale.

Then she looked up at him, and her eyes were sharper than he had ever seen them.

But there was no panic. Not even a trace of it.

She tore the report in half. Folded the halves together. Tore them again. The pieces fluttered onto the table like confetti at a funeral.

"What is this supposed to be? Some kind of joke?" Her voice was steady, controlled, almost bored. "Because it's not funny, Jason."

What does she mean by that?

Jason didn't flinch.

He had already played this exact scenario out in his head a hundred times since yesterday. He knew she would deny it. He knew she would try to make him feel stupid for asking. He had prepared for all of it.

"Do you know how many times I had it tested?" His voice stayed calm, but the muscles in his jaw were working overtime. "Three separate labs. Three different tests. Every single one came back with the same result."

He locked eyes with her across the table.

"Nina is not my biological daughter. She's the child you had with another man."

"Jason, you..." Lauren's entire demeanor changed in an instant. The calm mask cracked and something ugly flashed across her face. Her eyes narrowed, and she stared at him the way a prosecutor stares at a defendant who just said something incriminating on the stand.

"Why were you doing all this behind my back?"

For a moment, Jason genuinely thought he had misheard her.

You cheated on me. You let another man get you pregnant. You made me raise his kid for fifteen years thinking she was mine. And now you're sitting there acting like I'm the one who did something wrong?

The sheer audacity of it almost made him laugh.

But there was nothing funny about the look on her face. She was dead serious. She truly believed she had the right to be angry at him.

He didn't back down.

"Nina is fifteen now. Add the nine months you carried her, and that's sixteen years." Jason's voice dropped lower, each word landing heavier than the last. "You lied to me for sixteen years, Lauren."

"Jason Hart, I think all that whiskey last night fried whatever brain cells you had left!" Lauren's voice cracked like a whip across the private room. Her manicured nails pressed into the white tablecloth hard enough to leave marks. "How dare you sit there and say something this insane to my face?"

She jabbed one finger toward the door without breaking eye contact.

"We're going home. Right now. And until I say otherwise, you are not leaving that house."

There it is.

Jason stared at her. Sixteen years of swallowing his pride, of stepping aside so she could shine, of being the quiet, supportive husband who never made waves. Sixteen years of playing a role she had written for him without ever asking his permission.

"What do you think I am, Lauren?"

His jaw locked so tight the veins in his neck stood out.

"Your dog? Your pet that sits at home and waits for you to come back from wherever you've been and whoever you've been with?"

Lauren's eyes widened slightly. In sixteen years of marriage, Jason had never spoken to her like this. Not once.

"Starting today, I'm not going back to that house." He paused. The words he had been choking on since yesterday finally clawed their way out of his throat. "I want a divorce."

"Divorce?" Lauren repeated the word like she had never heard it before in her life. Her whole body went still, and she stared at him as if he had just slapped her across the face.

"You actually want to divorce me?" Her voice turned ice cold. "You've completely lost your mind. You're being absolutely ridiculous."

The weight of her presence seemed to fill the entire room. This was the Lauren Chase that thirty million fans worshipped, the woman who could silence a room full of executives with a single look, the celebrity whose name alone could make or break careers.

But Jason didn't move.

He sat there with his hands flat on the table and his eyes locked on hers, and he did not say another word.

The fact that he wasn't backing down only made it worse.

Lauren stood up so fast her chair scraped against the floor. She grabbed her purse, walked to the door, and slammed it behind her hard enough to rattle the plates on the table.

Jason let out a breath he felt like he had been holding for sixteen years.

He sat alone in the quiet private room, staring at the torn pieces of the paternity test scattered among the oyster shells and untouched dishes. Memories flooded in whether he wanted them or not. The day they got married. The night Nina was born and he held her for the first time with tears rolling down his face. All those years of working double shifts so Lauren could keep chasing her dream. The way she used to curl up against him on the couch before she was famous, back when it was just the two of them against the world.

A single tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and kept staring at the wall.

The door opened again.

Lauren stepped back inside. Her expression was completely different now. The anger was gone, replaced by something softer, almost vulnerable. She closed the door gently behind her and walked toward him.

"Jason." Her voice was quiet, tender, nothing like the woman who had been shouting at him thirty seconds ago. "Apologize to me. Tell me you didn't mean what you just said."

She stood beside him, looking down at him with eyes that were almost pleading.

"Promise me you'll never bring up divorce again. And promise me you'll stop drinking too."

Her voice dropped even lower, barely above a whisper.

"If you do that, I'll pretend none of this ever happened."

She reached out and placed her hand gently over his.

"We can still go back to the way things were before. Just you and me, going home together like always."