But Effie was faster. She snatched it away and had someone inspect it.
One look at the stains and her face went livid.
Her eyes dropped to my flat chest, and she backhanded Samuel across the face.
"I know every woman who's nursed my daughter. She is not one of them!"
"Who is this other woman?"
The ring on Effie's hand left a bloody scratch across Samuel's cheek, but he didn't dare show even a flicker of anger.
All he could do was fix me with a venomous stare and keep piling the filth onto me.
"Who says a woman has to be nursing to smell like that?"
"Some women are just born with it—milk in their bodies whether they've had a baby or not, and this sweet, strange scent coming off their skin."
"Doesn't matter how fussy the kid is. The second it gets close to a woman like her, it stops crying. Can't help but cling to her."
"She's barely out of her twenties and she walked in here pulling fifty thousand a month as a maternity nanny. Maybe that's exactly the edge she has."
"That underwear is hers."
Samuel laid it out so convincingly that Effie demanded I strip on the spot for inspection.
I refused outright and pulled out my phone to call the police.
Samuel snatched it from my hand and smashed it on the ground.
"You say it isn't you? Then let someone check. Simple. Why all the resistance? Because you know you're guilty!"
I wasn't about to back down.
"Didn't do it. Period. You want me to strip over some baseless accusation? Fine—then I say you can't get it up."
"Why don't you drop your pants and prove it to everyone here?"
That shut Samuel up. Effie, though, was frowning hard.
She told me, "Samuel would never accuse someone without reason. If you say that underwear isn't yours, find a way to prove it."
"Or step inside and have a conversation with Brutus."
"I find that facing those fangs has a way of making liars honest."
Effie was boxing me in. Strip naked in front of everyone to prove my innocence—or climb into that cage and feed the dog.
The bodyguards had already closed in around me.
The moment I tried to run, they would swarm me, seize me, and stuff me into that cage—a wrongful corpse under the mastiff's claws.
I took a deep breath and made my choice right there.
I reached into my bag and let the documents do the talking.
A diploma from a top university in Westbridge State. A doctorate in economics.