Not Their Daughter, Just the Mistress Chapter 15

Not Their Daughter, Just the Mistress Chapter 15

Even at the gate, I couldn’t focus.

I kept refreshing the news. The comments. Anything.

Nothing about Everett.

My knuckles went white around the armrest. Then the door outside the private lounge burst open, and I

heard his voice.

“Winona, I know you’re pregnant. Come out!”

My whole body shook. Relief hit me first. He was alive. Then the dread swallowed it whole.

…He’d found me already.

Nolan gave my hand a squeeze and walked out to face him alone.

“She’s not coming out. Walk away.”

Through the crack in the door, I saw him. Disheveled, for the first time ever. His jaw was set, but his face looked like something inside him had broken.

The comments popped up instantly, claiming his real target had gotten away, and this devastated look was just wounded pride. He couldn’t stand being played by a rival and his own woman.

I went cold. And then…

Everett’s voice ripped through the door.

“Winona, we’ve been together for three years. Three years… And you’d rather trust some stranger over me?”

“I knew her before you did. Of course she trusts me.”

Nolan braced himself in the doorway, laughing, the bitter, ugly kind. “Mr. Vaughn, if you hadn’t kept her caged up, I would’ve been with her years ago…”

“Then you should’ve died overseas.”

A round clicked into the chamber.

When Everett spoke again, there was nothing human left in his voice.

“Men who steal what’s mine belong in the ground…”

“I don’t belong to you!”

I threw the door open and put myself between them.

“We’re not even married… Nolan didn’t force me to go with him.”

“I left with him because I wanted to… I, I want to leave you!”

The gun drifted sideways. Something in his eyes shattered.

His mouth opened, and I cut him off. “Let me go, Everett. Please.”

I couldn’t look at him. My head dropped, tears blurring everything, and I said it again.

“If what I did for you that night ever meant anything, please stop chasing me. Just let me go…”

The plane took off that day. I made it out.

But I couldn’t shake the last image of him, swaying on his feet, so wrecked with rage and hurt that his legs barely held.

I landed and settled into the apartment I’d set up ahead of time.

I wired Nolan some money and kept a handful of bodyguards on rotation.

But Nolan wouldn’t go. He said he was worried, and nothing I said could budge him. He moved into the apartment next door.

He brought me food, came with me to every prenatal appointment, and walked with me through the park when I needed air.

Even on the days I couldn’t smile, he kept talking, filling the silence so I wouldn’t drown in it.

“You lied to me. More than once.”

I cut through Nolan’s rambling and looked him dead in the eye. “Why?”

Years ago, when we were both in college, he told me he was an orphan. Broke. Nobody.

So when I found him facing eviction, barely scraping by, I pulled $2,000 from my savings and paid his rent.

“I didn’t…”

Nolan’s composure cracked. “Winona, I wasn’t lying. Back then, I really was just an illegitimate kid thrown out by his family. I couldn’t even afford to eat! I wanted to tell you everything once I got home, but the timing was never right…”

“And working with Sloane behind my back?”

Nolan froze. “I knew she wasn’t a good person, but she was useful. I thought if I told you first, you’d say no, so I did it and figured I’d explain after…”

“But you still lied. Good reason or not, you lied.”

“Lcan’t be with someone who lies to me.”

“Every word you say, I’d always be wondering which ones were real.”

“I’m sorry. You should go.”