Her Case
She was aware that she had a case because to her research. To aid women like her, laws had been put in place. She picked up her phone and made a call to a lawyer.
What the twins revealed stunned everyone in the courtroom. A loud gasp resounded across the space. Their admission was reported on by news outlets across the country. Mia felt her stomach turn.
Mia Feliz
Mia Feliz was 25 years old when she first found out she was pregnant with twins. As a single woman who was working her way through college, she didn’t know who to turn to.
She was alone and scared and had no idea what to do. She was in her third year of college, studying for a law degree. A degree that would eventually help her to enact her revenge.
Fernando
They only went on a couple of dates together when it became obvious that they weren’t meant for each other. His name was Fernando. From the first moment, Mia could tell that he wasn’t what you may call “husband material”.
Fernando seemed like a rolling stone who didn’t take anything seriously. And that wasn’t all there was to it.
Something Fishy
From the very start, there was something about Fernando that rubbed Mia off the wrong way. Even though she never spent more than a few hours together with him over the span of three weeks, she could tell that there was something fishy about that man.
Time would end up proving her suspicions to be right for all the wrong reasons.
Just A Routine
On the three occasions they hung out together, Mia felt like everything Fernando said and did was just a front. His conversation felt like a scripted routine he had rehearsed a thousand times, and nothing he said felt sincere.
To make things worse, he was too arrogant, even though he had nothing to show for it.
A Slacker
Fernando seemed to have no career or even occupation; when Mia asked him what he did for a living, he just gave vague answers along the lines of “a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
It was clear that Fernando wasn’t a man characterized by his ambition, but that wasn’t even the worst part of it. When Mia saw the place where he was living, she was left speechless.
His Apartment
Fernando lived in a so-called “studio apartment” that looked more like a jail cell. The walls were covered in black mold, the air stinked of something hard to define, and the furniture surfaces were covered in grease.
But that wasn’t all. At one point of the night, Mia spotted something that instantly froze her blood.
Cockroaches!
As they were laying in bed, Mia saw a few cockroaches running up and down the apartment’s floor. There were also cigarette butts scattered at random points of the apartment.
Mia felt absolutely revolted. How could a grown man like Fernando live like this? However, despite all that, Mia caught herself doing something she could have never imagined herself to do.
Attraction
Even though Fernando was obviously someone she didn’t see herself with in the long term, Mia couldn’t help but feel attracted to him.
She couldn’t put her finger on what it was exactly; but the truth is that Fernando had Mia under his spell for a good three weeks. She didn’t mind all of Fernando’s obvious shortcomings; and it was for a reason.
Just For Fun
Obviously, Fernando was far from being Mia’s ideal long-term partner; but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t fun to hang out with.
So even after noticing how unreliable and immature he was and how little he had going for him, Mia decided that it wouldn’t do any harm to hang out with him every now and then. They were three weeks filled with fun; but it came to an end after an event that left Mia heartbroken.
Ghosted
All of a sudden, Fernando stopped answering Mia's messages and calls. It was like he had vanished off the face of the Earth, but deep inside, Mia knew what that really meant.
It meant he was done with her. She didn’t expect that it would hurt as much as it did, even though she couldn’t say she hadn’t seen the red flags from the beginning. But that was just the beginning of her misfortunes.
First Symptoms
Just a few weeks after Fernando disappeared from her life, Mia began feeling some strange symptoms. Instantly, she thought of one possible explanation about what might be causing them.
She prayed that it wasn’t what she feared it might be. But first, she had to make sure. She bought a pregnancy test in a pharmacy and she walked home with her heart galloping.
Two Lines
Closing her eyes, she prayed that she wouldn’t see the dreaded two lines. But when she opened them again, there they were, clear as day.
Instantly, Mia’s world came crashing down. Her head was spinning and she felt a pit in her stomach. What was she going to do now? But she was sure of something: first of all, there was someone who needed to know about this.
Trying To Reach Him
Instantly, Mia took her phone and called Fernando. This time, he would have to listen to her, whether he liked it or not.
Mia was positive that Fernando was the father of the kid. He had been the only man in her life for the last few months. She anxiously waited for him to pick up the phone, thinking about how she would break the news down to him.
No Response
But Fernando didn’t pick up the phone. After trying a couple of times more with no results, she decided to text him and tell him what she had just found out.
“Fernando, I’m pregnant. I’m positive that you’re the father. I’ve been trying to reach you. Call me when you are free,” she said, and she left it at that.
Denying Everything
Eventually, a few minutes after she sent her text, Fernando gave Mia a call. He asked her if she was joking, and Mia assured him that she was dead serious.
After Mia told Fernando about their pregnancy, everything went horribly wrong. He completely denied any responsibility and claimed the kid wasn’t his. Mia saw red.
Angry And Confused
She was livid and confused. How could someone be so cruel? Mia had no family to whom she could turn. They all lived in Brazil. She had moved to California to pursue her education alone. She was completely by herself.
But there was something she knew for sure: she couldn’t let Fernando get away with this.
New Strategy
She hounded him. There was no way Mia would let him deny his own children and allow her to foot all the bills that were coming down the line.
When she saw him again on the street, she confronted him. But this time it was worse than before. Now he acted like he didn’t even know her. This wasn’t working. Mia knew she had to do more.
Wanting Revenge
Mia stormed off, steaming with anger. Her confrontations weren’t working. She needed help - legal help. From her studies, she knew that she had a case, and she was willing to go all the way in.
There were laws in place to help women like her. She grabbed her textbooks and researched exactly what action she should take. Then, she called a lawyer.
Legal Action
Mia was a college student so she couldn’t afford a lawyer but what she could afford and had the means to find was something close. All she had to do was explain her situation to her professor who pointed her towards a pro bono lawyer.
A pro bono lawyer is basically a lawyer who works for free but has all the qualifications needed to do the job. And Mia was about to find out he did it well.
DNA Test
It wasn’t long before she ended up in court but no one could have imagined how things would inevitably turn out.
The court immediately issued Fernando to take a DNA test. But when the results came back, the results confused everyone at hand. The DNA matched two people. Two men were confirmed to be the father.
Twins
When Mia saw the two men enter the courtroom, she fell back. She was seeing double. There were two Fernando’s. They looked incredibly identical and the whole situation felt like a fever dream.
It soon became obvious that they were identical twins. Fernando never mentioned that he had a twin. Suddenly, a sickening feeling came over her.
Bad To Worse
Mia was asked to identify the twin she thought was the father. She couldn’t identify him by his appearance but told the court he introduced himself as Fernando.
Fernando denied the charge and accused his twin brother, Fabricio, of identity theft. Both of the men fought desperately to shirk responsibility for the babies by blaming each other. Then it went from bad to worse.
Same DNA
Because they were identical twins, they shared the exact same DNA. There was no test available that could scientifically prove which twin was lying. It was impossible to tell which twin was the biological father.
Mia couldn’t believe what was happening. But the nightmare she was living was not over. As a matter of fact, the worst was yet to come.
Horrid Discovery
As the trial unfolded, more and more information came out about the two reprehensible twins. And the sick reality of what really happened made Mia’s stomach churn.
The courtroom was left astounded as an audible gasp echoed through the room from those engaged in the case. It hit news broadcasts all over the nation. The discovery?
Ruling
Judge Filipe Luís Peruca ordered that both twins provide financial support to Mia by giving her a third of their paycheck monthly. He stated, “One of the brothers, in bad faith, seeks to conceal fatherhood.”
“Such behavior, of course, should not receive a guarantee from the judiciary which, on the contrary, must repress clumsy behavior, especially in the case in which the defendants seek to benefit from their own clumsiness.” There was more about what the twins were hiding.
Serial Daters
It was discovered that the twins often used their likeness to impersonate each other. Their goal? to date as many women as they possibly could.
A statement from the court said, "Since adolescence, the pair used their identical appearance to hide betrayals and win over more women”. But for Mia, it was a lucky escape.
Mia’s Words
“It’s a very sad attitude, there was no need for this. They know the truth but took advantage of the similarity to escape responsibility,” Mia said to the press later on.
“He told me he had a twin brother, but I wasn’t introduced. At the time I didn’t suspect anything,” the mother also said, according to the court statement.
Lucky Escape
However, even though she grieves for her children to be kept in the dark about who his father is, she also feels incredibly lucky to be able to detach completely from such a person and keep their lives relatively separate.
That’s a person she and her family would be far better without, and only God knows what kind of childhood would the kid have with that kind of man as a father.
Child Support
Each man will have to pay about 30% of Brazil’s monthly minimum wage, which is around $70, and share the mother’s dental, medical, school, and clothing costs.
In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.