Proposed to Him with a Deed but He Already Had a Child Chapter 09

Proposed to Him with a Deed but He Already Had a Child Chapter 09

I turned and walked away.

Someone hurried after me It was Megan.

Breathless, she grabbed my sleeve.

“Nora, I’m sorry. I truly didn’t know Sabrina would go that far. I thought she only wanted to scare you.”

I stopped walking.

“Were you the one who twisted my wrist that day?”

The knife had been aimed at Ethan’s chest, but someone violently twisted my wrist at the last second,

turning the blade toward me instead.

Megan had trained in martial arts as a child. With that background, her quick reflexes made perfect sense.

Her face went white.

I repeated the exact words she had once used against me.

“Megan, even though we’re close, I can’t defend you. You were her accomplice.”

Two weeks later, the police formally arrested Sabrina on charges related to my mother’s death and for ordering the destruction of evidence.

The Caldwell family’s attorneys tried to argue for reduced charges by portraying the incident as an emotional outburst caused by a private family dispute, but the state Department of Health’s involvement turned it into a major patient-safety scandal.

Public opinion reversed completely.

The same accounts that had called me a homewrecker a month earlier deleted their posts and disappeared.

The Caldwell family’s construction-materials company and real-estate business were dragged into the scandal, and their partners began pulling out one after another.

Within a month, the once-powerful Caldwell family of Port Haven had been reduced to an empty shell.

Then I received another piece of evidence.

Ethan gave it to me.

“This drive contains records of the Caldwell family’s tax fraud and illegal investment schemes, along with

payment records showing that they bribed several public officials.”

Dark circles shadowed his eyes. He clearly had not been doing well.

I took the flash drive.

Why are you only giving this to me now?”

He looked up at me. I saw weariness and honesty in his eyes that I had never seen before.

“It took me six years to gather enough evidence to bring the Caldwell family down.”

“Nora, I endured six years inside that family because I wanted my father’s company back.”

He told me that the Cole family had once owned a long-established construction-materials company in Port Haven. Ten years earlier, the Caldwells had taken over the company through corporate fraud, and Ethan’s

father had fallen into a severe depression and eventually died.

Ethan’s marriage to Sabrina had always been an arrangement built on mutual exploitation.

He had agreed to marry her so he could gather evidence from inside the Caldwell family. He had also chosen a long-distance relationship with me because he was afraid Sabrina would come after me.

“But I never imagined she would go this far.” Ethan’s voice trembled.

“I thought that as long as I protected you, she wouldn’t come after you. But I couldn’t even protect your

mother.”

I looked at him now that every pretense had fallen away, and suddenly he seemed like a stranger.

We had been together for ten years, yet only now did I understand what he had truly been carrying.

That did not mean I could forgive him

“Nora, can you give me one more chance?” Ethan asked.

I shook my head.

“You used me, and you hurt me. My mother is never coming back.

His eyes turned red.

Everything that happened afterward unfolded exactly as the news reported.

Every member of the Caldwell family involved in the crimes was indicted and taken into custody. Sabrina was sentenced to seven years in prison for her role in my mother’s death and for obstruction of justice, while the others received sentences ranging from three to fifteen years for financial crimes.

I took my mother’s ashes back to my hometown and bought her a burial plot in a quiet cemetery.

After that, I went to Sedona.

The climb to the Chapel of the Holy Cross was steep. Inside, I left the rosary my mother had carried for years

beside the votive candles.

Outside, the desert wind roared through the red-rock catıyon behind me.

Then I turned and walked back down without looking back.