Best Friend Uses Pregnant Belly to Extort Me

Two in the morning, and my best friend pounded my door down with her mother in tow.

She dropped to her knees, hair a mess, sobbing so hard she was hiccuping.

That blind date you set me up with, he raped me last month while I was drunk.

You knew exactly what kind of man he was. You did this to me on purpose!

I froze, mouth already opening to protest.

Then a stream of floating comments drifted past my eyes.

Don't deny it! She's two months pregnant, and the baby is her ex-boyfriend's!

She's waiting for you to protest, then she'll throw out fake chat records to nail you for putting him up to it!

Last time your parents were harassed so badly they had strokes on the spot, and your family paid eight hundred grand to settle!

Admit it! Get her to file a report at the police station. That night's dashcam footage is your blade!

I looked at her mother, quietly filming from the corner, and I smiled.

"Yes, I told him to do it. Come on. I'll go report it with you right now."

Loretta James clearly never expected me to go along with her and admit it.

The sob stuck in her throat cut off all at once, and right on its heels came one loud hiccup.

Jean Whitney had been hunched by the door, holding her phone dead steady, secretly recording me.

At my words her fingers jerked, the phone nearly cracking against the security door, and then she shoved the lens right up to my face.

"You all heard that!"

"She admitted it herself. She put my daughter up to it!"

"Eleanor Fox, how could you be so heartless!"

Loretta recovered fast, pushing herself up off the floor and yanking open the canvas bag she'd brought.

A thick stack of printed A4 pages slapped down hard on the living room coffee table.

"What are you still playing the good person for?"

She jabbed a finger at the top page.

"These are all the chats between you and me!"

"You even coached me. Sleep with him first, make it a done deal, then squeeze him for money!"

"Eleanor, I treated you like my best friend for ten years, and to you I was just a way to make cash?"

My mother heard the commotion from the master bedroom and came running out in her coat. She saw the mess on the floor and her hands shook with rage.

"What on earth are you two babbling about!"

"Our Ellie would never do something so vile!"

I hurried over and grabbed her, steering both her and my father back toward the bedroom.

"Mom, don't come out. I've got this."

The door locked behind them.

I turned around. The stack of pages was already spread open across the table.

I walked over, picked up the first sheet, and my mouth twitched.

"Quite the thorough job."

"Even splurged on color printing."

The first page showed my WeChat profile picture, my ID down to the last character.

In the chat thread, this so-called me was earnestly urging Loretta to go meet her blind date, Jeremy Dickerson.

Jeremy's family got three units from a buyout. You have to land him tonight.

I flipped to the second page.

Once he's drunk he won't know which way is up. Take your chance and sleep with him.

Once the pregnancy shows, you can name whatever engagement money you want.

"What day was the dinner?"

"What exactly did I say to you then?"

"Read it out loud, right now, to my face."

Loretta bit her lip and stared me down, fingers pinching that sheet of paper until her knuckles went white.

Her voice trembled, and she had the wronged-victim act down cold.

"The fifteenth of last month."

"Eight in the evening, the Blue Harbor Restaurant on the West Side."

"You left early and had me take Jeremy home."

"You said he was drunk, that it was the best chance."

The further she read, the smoother it got.

Time, place, people, all of it fabricated to look real, right down to exactly when I'd supposedly slipped out.

Seeing her daughter had the upper hand, Jean set her phone down at once, dropped onto my sofa, and crossed her legs.

"Eleanor, the evidence is right here. What's the point of arguing?"

"My daughter was a virgin, and you ruined her just like that. She barely wants to go on living now."

She held up one hand, first showing five fingers, then slowly adding three more.

"Settle it privately."

"Eight hundred grand."

"Not a cent less."

"If you don't pay up, tomorrow I'll post this video to the group chat at your dance studio."

"Let's see who'll dare send their kid to a teacher who pimps people out after that!"

I didn't answer her. I slid my hand into my pajama pocket and pressed record.

One by one I picked up the chat records off the table and photographed each one, clear as day.

Page one, click.

Page two, click.

As soon as I finished each shot, I uploaded it to the cloud, right in front of them.

Loretta faltered.

"What are you taking pictures of that for?"

I put my phone away, turned, and went to the entryway for my car keys.

"Locking in the evidence."

Shoes on, I pulled the door open.

"There's nothing to settle privately."

"You've got evidence, don't you?"

"Come on. You're coming with me to the police station to file the report right now."

I stood in the doorway. Loretta didn't move.

Jean froze on the sofa too.

I looked back over my shoulder.

"What?"

"You get raped and don't report it? Waiting around here for a lucky day on the calendar?"

At three in the morning, the lights at the police station were still on.

Loretta sat in the mediation room, hair a mess, both hands over her face, sobbing in little hitching breaths.

Jean dropped to her knees the moment she came through the door and clamped both hands on the duty officer's arm.

"Officer, you have to help us!"

"This woman has a heart like a snake. To pocket a matchmaking bonus, she put my daughter into an old man's bed!"

The officer frowned and pried her hands loose.

"Say what you have to say, but no grabbing."

I stood off to the side and handed over the phone recording and the photos I'd just taken, all at once.

"Officer, I want to file a report and request an investigation."

"They pounded on my door at two in the morning and used forged chat records to demand eight hundred thousand from me."

The officer looked at me, then separated everyone first.

"Statements taken separately."

I was brought into the small room next door. The body camera was already running, and the officer opened his notebook.

"Name, age, occupation."

"They're accusing you of inciting someone to commit rape. Do you have anything to say?"

I rested my hands on my knees, but my fingertips were pinching hard enough to go numb.

"All I did was introduce them."

"The night of the dinner, I left early. I have no idea what happened afterward."

The officer looked up.

"Then why did you admit to it at home?"

I tugged at the corner of my mouth. My voice stayed level.

"If I didn't admit it, they'd have kept pounding on the door."

"My parents are old. They can't take that kind of shock."

"And only if I went along with them would they pull out all their so-called evidence."

Once the statement was done, I came out of the room.

Narelle Swanson, a friend of both of us, had rushed to the station. The second she walked in, she took Loretta's hand.

"Etta, how did you let yourself get into this state?"

She turned to look at me, sighing first, like she was scolding two children who didn't know any better.

"Eleanor, we're all friends here. You really went too far this time."

"Etta's pregnant. Just swallow your pride and pay her a little, and be done with it."

"If this really goes to court, you're a teacher. Do you want a reputation left or not?"

I stared at her.

"She's pregnant. What does that have to do with me?"

Narelle got worked up at once.

"How can you be so cold-blooded?"

Timing it carefully, Loretta pulled a slip of paper from her bag and slapped it down on the table.

"Eleanor, still won't admit it?"

"This is the proof!"

It was an ultrasound report from the city women's and children's hospital, Loretta's name printed on it, eight weeks along.

I walked over, picked it up, and scanned it.

"Eight weeks?"

"You're sure you got pregnant at that dinner on the fifteenth of last month?"

Loretta's eyes darted away for a second, then she clenched her teeth again.

"Yes!"

"That's the night it happened!"

She turned to the officer, her voice suddenly climbing.

"Officer, you can write that into the statement!"

"It was Jeremy Dickerson who did it!"

The officer put the report away, his face grave.

"A rape accusation needs a complete chain of evidence."

"Right now all we have is the woman's one-sided testimony and this report. We can't open a case on that alone."

"But you two showing up before dawn to demand eight hundred thousand looks like extortion, and we've made a note of it."

Jean wasn't having it.

"What extortion!"

"That's compensation for emotional damages!"

The officer tapped the desk with one finger.

"Whether it's extortion or not, the police will keep looking into it."

"That's enough for tonight."

Outside the station, cold wind cut straight at us, and Loretta hunched her neck down into her collar.

Jean turned back and spat at me.

"Eleanor, don't get smug."

"You don't pay up, I'll ruin your name!"

Narelle, holding Loretta up, shook her head at me.

"Eleanor, you really won't cry until you see the coffin."

I didn't answer them. I walked straight to my car.

The moment my hand touched the door, something flashed in front of my eyes.

A line of floating comments drifted through the air.

The forged chat records still have their source files on the computer at Dana's mechanic shop.

Don't tip them off. That's the key to a conviction.

Dana.

Loretta's idle, good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend.

I took out my phone, opened the notes app, and carefully wrote down five words: Dana's mechanic shop, source files.

My finger paused, and then I added a question mark after it.

This thread had to be pulled slowly.

In the small hours of the next morning, an edited video went up at the same time on the local forum and the short-video platform.

The footage shook badly, Jean's phone camera nearly pressed against my face.

Someone had cranked the background audio on purpose, so even my one line came through clean: Yes, I told him to go.

No before, no after, just those seconds, but the caption slapped on top knew how to catch an eye.

Snake of a best friend sets a trap, hands her drunk sister into the tiger's den.

Children's dance teacher Fox, and this is her true face.

At eight in the morning, the second I reached the studio door, a cluster of parents surrounded me.

They held up their phones and pointed and cursed.

"That's her!"

"That's the woman from the video!"

"Someone like this has no business teaching kids!"

"Refund! We want our money back!"

The studio director came charging out and dragged me into the office.

"Eleanor, what kind of trouble have you gotten into?"

"There's a scene out there, and the phone won't stop ringing."

I handed him the case-filing receipt from the police station.

"The police already have it on record. This is extortion. I'm being framed."

He gave it one glance and pushed it back at me.

"I don't care who's right and who's wrong. The studio can't sit here taking the heat with you."

"Go home for now, classes are suspended. Wait for word."

I packed my things into a bag and left through the back door.

I'd barely settled into the car when the group chats blew up.

Narelle posted a long voice message in the college alumni group.

"Honestly, Eleanor didn't mean any harm. She's just too greedy for money."

"That Jeremy paid her a nice finder's fee. A moment of bad judgment, it happens."

"Everyone, don't pile on too hard. It wouldn't be good if we drove her to something."

The group only caught fire faster.

"Greedy for money means you get to sell out your best friend?"

"Disgusting. I say she gets blacklisted, plain and simple."

Loretta's message popped up right behind it.

"See that?"

"This is what happens when you don't pay."

"Last chance. Six hundred thousand."

"Money hits my account, I delete the video and clear your name right away."

"Otherwise, next stop is your parents' place."

My hands clenched too hard on the wheel, the knuckles going white in waves.

Red comments jumped across my eyes, like someone frantic to throw the words straight into my face.

It's tonight!

They're going to corner your parents!

Last life, they hounded your mom into a stroke, she went down in the stairwell and never woke up again!

Something bore down hard on my chest, and my breath came up short.

The next second I floored the gas and the car shot forward.

Twenty minutes later I pulled the car sideways at the foot of my parents' building, a tire scraping the curbside stone post with an ugly screech.

I wasn't even inside the stairwell yet when Jean's shrill voice came drilling out ahead of me.

"Everybody, come look!"

"This household raised a woman who talks people into rape!"

"Ruined my daughter's whole life, and now she's hiding, too gutless to show her face!"

I rushed up to the third floor. Jean stood there banging a battered metal basin, cursing between the clangs.

The stairwell was packed with neighbors. No one stepped up to stop her. They just muttered to each other and watched the show.

Behind the security door, my mother's voice was shaking so hard it barely held together.

"Get out of here!"

"My daughter would never do a thing like that!"

I opened the camera on my phone and dialed 911.

"Hello, is this 911?"

"Someone's making a disturbance outside my home, and they're extorting us."

"The address is"

Jean saw me, threw the basin aside, and came at me clawing and screaming.

"You little slut, you've got the nerve to show up here!"

Her hand shot toward my face. I stepped aside, keeping the camera steady on her.

"Keep going."

"I'm recording every word."

Ten minutes later officers arrived and cleared out the gawking crowd.

I stood in the stairwell, took a written request out of my bag, and handed it to the officer.

"Officer, I'm formally requesting that you pull the evidence."

"On the night of the fifteenth last month, the dashcam from the Uber Loretta took after she left the Blue Harbor Restaurant."

"And the city surveillance cameras along the route."

Jean's face froze for a beat, then twisted into a sneer.

Loretta sent a voice message to the group chat.

"Pull it, then. You think I'm scared of you?"

"Let's see what you manage to dig up!"

I looked at the message and let out a small laugh.

Of course you're not scared.

Because you have no idea what that car actually recorded.

The night before the evidence hearing, Loretta blew the whole thing wide open.

She went live. The background was a wall scrubbed too clean, and she'd draped herself in an oversized white shirt, hair a deliberate mess.

In her hands she held up the ultrasound from the city women's and children's hospital, and that stack of forged chat records.

The viewer count hit a hundred thousand in no time.

She kept her head down.

"This baby has no father now."

"All the evidence is in that wicked woman's hands. She has money, she has power. I can't win against her."

"Tomorrow I'm going to the police station. If I don't come back, please remember my name."

The moment the crying started, the comment stream filled up with demands to punish the vicious best friend.

At the same time, someone splashed red paint all over my parents' security door.

The blood-red paint dripped down through the seams, and across the door, scrawled crooked, was the word INSTIGATOR.

I got there to find my mother sitting on the couch, clutching her blood-pressure medication, twisting at the cap she couldn't get open no matter how long she tried.

My father paced back and forth beside her, nothing left in him but sighs.

"Ellie, maybe we should just give her the money."

"There's no living like this."

I went over, took the bottle, shook out two pills, and held them to my mother's lips.

"Dad. Mom."

"Paying her is the same as admitting guilt."

"Trust me. After tomorrow, I'll make them lick that paint off the door themselves."

My phone buzzed in my bag. The dance studio's official termination letter.

The reasons were dressed up nicely. Serious violation of teaching ethics, severe negative social impact, no compensation to be paid.

Narelle had updated her feed too.

Saw through her rotten heart a long time ago. Good thing I cut ties early.

The likes underneath were already past a thousand.

Nine the next morning, the verification room at the police station.

Loretta and Jean walked in dressed head to toe in plain white.

Jean was dragging a huge suitcase, and she started shouting the second she was through the door.

"Officer, the evidence is all right here!"

"You have to arrest this pimp today!"

Dana Perry trailed in behind them.

"Officer, I'll testify!"

"I was the one who took Etta home that night!"

"Her clothes were torn, she cried the whole way. That blind-date guy did it!"

He raised his hand and pointed at me.

"Eleanor, you have a black heart!"

The false-testimony piece was now in place.

Loretta struck while the iron was hot, eyes red as she turned to the officer.

"She's already admitted it herself. What's the point of checking any dashcam?"

"Why aren't you arresting her?"

"Did she pay you off?"

Jean wailed right along beside her.

"There's no justice in this world!"

"Bullying a widow and her fatherless girl!"

The room dissolved into shouting, the water cups on the table trembling faintly with it.

The officer frowned and brought his hand down hard on the tabletop.

"Quiet!"

"This is a police station, not a street market!"

He picked up the clear evidence bag from the edge of the table. Inside sat a tiny SD card.

"This was lawfully obtained by the police. It's the dashcam memory card from the Uber Loretta rode in on the night of the fifteenth last month."

The card went into the reader, and the projection screen came slowly down.

The lights went off. Loretta stood off to the side with her arms crossed, a cold smile still hanging at the corner of her mouth.

"Play it, then."

"Let's see what tricks she can pull."

The screen lit. The timestamp read 23:07 on the fifteenth of last month.

The footage opened on the entrance of the Blue Harbor Restaurant on the West Side, right there in front of everyone.

Loretta stood at the curb, smiling, easing a swaying, dead-drunk Jeremy into a taxi.

Once the taxi pulled away, she turned and yanked open the back door of an Uber, quick and practiced.

She slid in and told the driver,

"East Side, please."

"Step on it. Dana's still waiting for me at the motel."

Every word was crisp and clear, clear enough to smother the breathing in the room.