Pregnant and Spoiled by the Billionaire — Episode 25
The ballroom erupted around Amelia. Guests who had applauded seconds earlier now stared as though Jenny’s accusation had revealed a scandal. Tommy clung to his mother’s hand and repeated that Amelia had pushed him, his small voice carrying farther than any adult defense. Flashing cameras turned a frightened child’s words into instant judgment before anyone asked whether they were true.
Jenny positioned herself between Leo and the child. “You can dislike me, but you cannot deny your own son,” she said. “Tommy has spent six years without a father, and now you’re choosing a woman who hurt him because she trapped you with another baby.”
Amelia felt every cruel label return at once. Gold digger. Liar. Unfit mother. Each one carried an old humiliation: Leo’s black card, Regina’s hands tearing her dress, and Sam calculating the price of his own daughter. She could defend herself against Jenny, but arguing with a five-year-old in front of cameras would only make her appear heartless. The trap depended on her compassion.
Leo handed the microphone to Matilda and moved beside Amelia. “I was present after Tommy fell,” he said to the room. “I believed Amelia then, and I believe her now. No one here will use an unproven accusation to insult her.”
Jenny asked whether he was calling his son a liar. Leo answered that children could repeat what frightened adults taught them. Tommy lowered his eyes, and guilt passed across his face before Jenny squeezed his hand.
Matilda ordered the cameras turned off and the doors closed. Her birthday celebration had become a family hearing, but she refused to let gossip control it. The staff collected phones from guests who had been recording, though Matilda knew some footage had already escaped. “If Tommy is my grandson, I will love him,” she said. “That does not require humiliating Amelia.”
Several guests murmured that a child would not invent such a story. Jenny seized on their sympathy, describing a violent push and a hospital stay while omitting the doctor’s conclusion that Tommy had suffered only a minor scrape. She presented the medical bill as evidence of serious injury.
Derek gave Leo the sealed laboratory envelope, but Leo did not open it immediately. The attempted theft made chain of custody essential. He asked the laboratory director, who had arrived as a witness, to confirm whether the result had been independently secured.
The director verified every sample, signature, and transfer. Jenny went pale, then recovered with a challenge: “Open it. Let everyone see that Tommy is yours.” Her confidence sounded rehearsed, yet fear sharpened the final word.
Tommy tugged at her sleeve and whispered that he wanted to go home. Jenny told him they were finally getting the family he deserved. “Just remember what Mommy said,” she murmured, unaware that Matilda’s microphone remained live.
The room heard her. Questions replaced sympathy, and Tommy began to cry. Amelia stepped down from the platform and crouched at a careful distance. “You aren’t in trouble,” she told him. “Whatever the truth is, none of this is your fault.”
Her kindness loosened something Jenny’s pressure had held in place. Tommy admitted he had never met Leo before coming to the penthouse. He said his mother promised toys, a big room, and a life where she would never cry about money again if he called Leo Daddy. Gasps moved through the ballroom, but Amelia kept her attention on the ashamed little boy rather than the adults judging him.
Jenny insisted a five-year-old was confused and too young to understand his own memories. Tommy shook his head and confessed that no one had pushed him. His mother had told him to fall where the camera could not see and blame Amelia so Leo would send the pregnant woman away. He began apologizing until his words dissolved into sobs.
Amelia closed her eyes against the pain of hearing a child describe his own manipulation. Leo’s anger became frighteningly still. He asked the child advocate to take Tommy to a quiet room with Matilda, protecting him from what would happen next.
Jenny tried to follow, but security blocked her. She accused Amelia of turning Tommy against his mother and claimed poverty had forced her into desperate choices. “You don’t understand what it means to lose everything,” she shouted.
“I understand better than you think,” Amelia replied. “But being afraid does not give you permission to use your child as a weapon.” The words came from every lesson Sam and Bethany had taught her at terrible cost.
Leo opened the envelope. The report excluded him as Tommy’s biological father. The certainty should have brought relief, yet Leo felt only grief for the boy forced to build hope around a lie. He showed the verified result to Jenny and told her the deception was over. She stared at the page, insisting the test had been manipulated despite her own attempt to steal the samples.
Matilda returned without Tommy and confronted the woman who had invaded her home and harmed a child for access to the Preston fortune. She declared that Amelia was the only woman she welcomed beside Leo and that anyone who disrespected her opposed the entire family.
Jenny’s final composure shattered. As security led her away, she shouted that Leo would regret choosing Amelia and promised the story was not finished. Leo ordered the evidence sent to Tommy’s advocate rather than pursuing revenge in front of the boy.
Relief should have ended the night, but Derek’s phone rang before the ballroom doors closed. He listened, then looked toward Amelia with alarm. Police had located Sam Gates at last—inside the hospital room of Amelia’s younger sister, who had been admitted unconscious after a suspected overdose.
