My Future Dad Admitted He Abandoned Me Chapter 09

My Future Dad Admitted He Abandoned Me Chapter 09

That was when he first started doubting Seraphina,

He rushed home and tore through every single thing she owned, eventually finding a locked diary

hidden inside her vanity drawer.

The diary laid out every single trick and wicked scheme in full detail.

Seraphina had never been an orphan at all. Her dad was a military officer who went to prison for embezzling funds and leaking classified military intel.

She’d held a burning grudge against the entire military base ever since, dead set on getting

revenge.

She knew Vaughn was Fort Hale’s youngest, most powerful commander with unlimited power and money, so she’d planned to get close to him on purpose.

That night, they got drunk. She slipped drugs into his drink on purpose, then orchestrated

it so Elara would walk in on them.

She’d never even been pregnant. Lyla was her daughter with some random civilian thug, and she only used the little girl to manipulate Vaughn to take responsibility for her.

The marriage license was fake. When Vaughn lay unconscious after sustaining injuries on a mission, she stole his ID card, filled out pre-signed application forms, bribed county court clerks, and secretly filed the paperwork without his knowledge.

That official signed will wasn’t voluntary at all. She threatened to kill herself unless he wrote it out

for her.

As for Jensen, Seraphina had spent years poisoning his mind. She told him Elara was spoiled rotten and looked down on her for being a lonely orphan. She also lied that Elara’d manipulated Vaughn into loving her with underhanded schemes

Jensen was already furious at Elara for going against the family to pick Vaughn anyway.

Seraphina’s manipulation made his hatred for his own sister even stronger.

Once Vaughn finished reading the diary, he sat there numb and shocked.

He finally saw he’d been nothing but Seraphina’s puppet all these years.

He was the one who’d hurt the woman that loved him deeper than anyone else, driving his own

wife and daughter straight to the brink of death.

He rushed out in a blind panic to find Seraphina. She was packing suitcases to run off abroad with Lyla, and he caught her red-handed.

Vaughn gathered every piece of evidence against her and sent Seraphina to prison.

She received a life sentence for fraud, assault, unlawful imprisonment, and several other serious crimes.

Since Lyla wasn’t Vaughn’s biological daughter, she got sent to a state foster care facility.

I later heard that spoiled, hot-tempered girl bullied all the other kids in the facility nonstop. At fifteen, she got locked up in juvenile detention after hitting another kid so badly they almost died.

When Jensen learned the whole truth, his guilt almost drove him to kill himself.

He couldn’t stand the shame of what he’d done to his sister and me, so he volunteered for a tiny remote outpost at Alaskan Interior-the most isolated border station in the whole region.

Five years back, he died on patrol saving a rookie soldier who fell into an ice crack.

When they pulled his body out, a photo of Mom and me was tucked inside his uniform pocket. Scrawled across the back in his handwriting: Elara, Hazel, I’m so sorry.

Vaughn pulled a faded yellowed photo out of his coat pocket and handed it to me.

Mom and I were smiling bright in the picture-the only photo we’d ever taken in that alternate

world without Vaughn in it.

Tears streamed down my face and landed on the photograph, smudging the writing on the back.

Even though Jensen had slapped Mom and taken Lyla’s side back then, I’d never truly hated him.

I never imagined his story would end like that.

“I haven’t gone a single day without feeling regret these past thirteen years.” Vaughn’s voice cracked, and he covered his face with his hands.

His shoulders shaking hard. “Every day I wonder-if I’d trusted your mom just a little more, if I hadn’t been so blind and stupid, if I’d grabbed you two before you jumped… you’d never have left

me.”

“I left the house we lived in completely untouched, every single thing exactly where you left it. Your

stuffed bear, your mom’s makeup table, the birthday cake we never finished sitting in the kitchen. I

clean the house every day. I buy her favorite white roses, and strawberry cake you love the best.”

“I throw a birthday party for you at the house every year, set out cake and light candles, even

though no one’s there to blow them out. I bought every birthday gift you’d ever get from age five to

eighteen, not a single one missing.”

“I donated all my personal savings to the Base Military Orphan Fund under your name. I built a hundred elementary schools in poor rural towns, every single one named after Hazel. I hoped all these good things would ease your hardships anywhere you went, and you’d find people who truly

loved you well.”

“I’d accepted I’d never see you two again. I never thought fate would give me a miracle, that I’d see you one more time. Hazel, I know I can never make up for all the pain I’ve caused you. I don’t beg for your forgiveness-I only ask to watch over you from far away for whatever time I have left.”

Staring at Vaughn, crying broken and begging humbly, my heart twisted up into a messy ball of mixed feelings.

Did I hate him?

Of course I did.

His cold cruelty all those years ago destroyed Mom and me completely.

All the nightmares that haunted my sleep, the crushing fear of being abandoned, the deep insecurity stuck inside me-all of it was his fault.

But watching him spend thirteen years drowning in endless regret and pain, seeing how worn out and gray-haired he’d become, learning all the good things he’d done in our memory.

My hatred slowly faded, worn thin by time.

Right then, my cell phone buzzed. Mom was calling me.