He Wanted an Heir, So I Gave Him Ashes Chapter 06

He Wanted an Heir, So I Gave Him Ashes Chapter 06

I don’t know how long I sat there, clutching those documents until they were as wrinkled as waste paper.

Rhett never came home. My phone remained silent.

At dawn, the sky barely starting to lighten, I was yanked from a fitful sleep by a tremendous force.

Rhett’s grip was rough, his arm clamping around my bicep like an iron band, the fury barely contained.

The sharp pain jolted me fully awake, tears springing to my eyes.

He dragged me into the living room and threw me onto the sofa. I hit the armrest with a dull thud.

“Ellie, was it you?” he roared, his handsome face twisted with rage. “Did you leak the baby’s photo to the gossip column at the Texas Morning Post?”

His chest heaved. “Do you have any idea how many enemies this family has? If that kind of news gets out, he could be kidnapped! What are you trying to destroy? This family, or my reputation?”

He bellowed as if I were the one who had betrayed him.

I said nothing. I just looked at him, my gaze cold.

This man, who had been so rattled yesterday by a single photo Daisy posted, had already convicted me on her word alone.

“Daisy said only you would have that much malice toward her and the child.” There wasn’t a trace of doubt in his voice. “Who else would do something like this but you?”

He had always been so calm, so restrained, so capable of pretending that anything he didn’t want to face simply hadn’t happened.

But for Daisy and that child, he was willing to cast aside the last shred of his dignity.

I pushed myself upright and suddenly laughed, the sound sharp and jarring in the cavernous room.

“So,” I asked, my voice ringing with clarity, “that child really is yours?”

Rhett froze.

He clearly hadn’t expected the question. The accusations he had prepared died in his throat. He pressed his lips into a thin line, his eyes darting away.

That was all the answer I needed.

Seeing him like that, his towering rage collapsed into a pathetic joke.

Perhaps my silence unnerved him, because his tone softened. He put on the sincere, apologetic face he wore so well.

“Ellie, Daisy lied to me. She bribed the doctor and faked the abortion. By the time I found out, the baby was already born.”

He moved closer, reaching for my hand. I pulled it away.

“Listen to me, Ellie. The place where she’s living has terrible security. It’s not safe. I’m going to bring him here, to the main house.”

I stared at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He took a deep breath and said, with a tenderness that was almost charitable, “You can raise him as your own.”

“From now on, he’ll be our son. You won’t have to suffer through those clinic visits anymore.”

He gazed at me as if he were bestowing a great mercy.

“This is a release for you, Ellie.”

In that instant, all the blood in my body turned to ice. A bone-deep cold spread from my heart to my fingertips.

I thought of the last few years. The cold instruments, the countless needles, the antiseptic smell of that clinic in Austin. Every appointment filled with hope, every result a crushing disappointment. To give the Walker family an heir, I had endured the pitying stares and turned my own body into a laboratory.

And now, with a single sentence, Rhett had redefined all my pain, all my sacrifice, as a sin from which I could be “released.”

I didn’t argue.

I just looked at him quietly, this man I had once loved so deeply, who now felt like a complete stranger.