He Wanted an Heir, So I Gave Him Ashes Chapter 03

He Wanted an Heir, So I Gave Him Ashes Chapter 03

My marriage to Rhett Walker had been considered a match made in heaven, uniting the financial prowess of the East Coast with the landed elite of Texas.

I was a Wharton grad; he was the heir to one of the oldest families in the state. Our union was a precise merger, linking modern capital to ancient land through the contract of love.

And it really did begin like a fairy tale.

Rhett admired my ambition and my mind, even seemed a little in awe of them. Unlike the other old-money Texans who instinctively looked down on a woman with a head for business, he took me back to his sprawling ranch, pointed to the mismanaged cattle operations and withered cotton fields teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and said, “Ellie, make this your empire.”

He gave me free rein. I fired the old-guard foremen who were coasting on connections, brought in actuarial models from Wall Street, and transformed the Walker family’s singular focus on livestock into a nationally renowned luxury organic brand. I brought the Walkers a level of wealth and prestige they had never even dreamed of.

In those years, Rhett was my staunchest ally. He would fly overnight to California to inspect new irrigation technology based on a single idea of mine. He would slam his fist on the table in board meetings packed with crusty old cowboys and defend me against every challenge.

I once thought we would be partners forever, the perfect fusion of the old world and the new.

Until the accident.

A tractor lost control. I shoved a child out of the way and was pinned beneath the overturned vehicle myself. My physical injuries healed, but the doctor told me it would be nearly impossible for me to conceive.

“The Walker family cannot be without an heir.”

That creed was carved into Rhett’s very bones.

He spoke of guilt, said I had suffered for his family. But the anxiety in his eyes was unmistakable. He started going to the loudest bar in town, drinking alone late into the night.

That’s when he ran into Daisy again.

A local girl who had been trailing after him since high school, nursing a silent crush.

She was a waitress at that bar, all cheap skirts and wide, damp eyes that never left him. She was nothing like me. She never discussed balance sheets or market forecasts. She just looked at him with the worshipful awe only a small-town Texas girl could muster and said, “Rhett, you carry too much on your shoulders.”

Rhett told her everything—the pressure, the anxiety about the family line. She listened as if he were delivering a sermon.

He started supporting her, setting her up in a nicer apartment, basking in the glow of her unconditional admiration.

Until one day, I came home early from an agricultural expo in Houston, hoping to surprise him. I found them in the small cottage deep on the ranch, the one we used to love.

Daisy was wearing nothing but Rhett’s shirt, cowering behind him. The moment she saw me, her eyes filled with tears, as if she were the one who’d been wronged.

“Mrs. Walker… I… I was just asking Rhett about my new job.”

My voice was ice. “Does that require taking your clothes off?”

Back then, even caught in the act, Rhett showed no guilt. Only indignant anger. He felt that I, an outsider, had made him, the king of Texas, lose face in front of one of his own.

He roared at me to get out.

That day, we had the worst fight of our marriage. In his rage, he agreed to a separation.

I moved to Austin.

Less than six months later, the Walker Group was in crisis. The supply chain system I had built was showing fatal flaws, and several major contracts were facing astronomical penalties for breach.

Rhett tracked me down like a madman and begged me to come back. His eyes were bloodshot, and for the first time, he showed weakness. He swore he and Daisy were over, that he couldn’t live without me, and neither could the Walker family.

To prove his sincerity, he signed an irrevocable legal document transferring the revenue rights of one of the Walker family’s most productive oil fields into my name.

He thought that document was his ticket to redemption.

He didn’t know it was the first time I realized that law and contracts were far more reliable than his love.

In my Austin apartment, I looked at the document he had signed and the remorse etched on his face, and I agreed to reconcile.

A part of me, it was true, hadn’t let go of our past.

But there was a more important reason, one I was brutally clear about.

The identity of “Rhett Walker’s wife” was the only thing that allowed me to legitimately control the Walker family’s business empire on this exclusionary, old-boys’-club land. It allowed me to leverage their land, resources, and connections into the foundation of my own future.

I didn’t come back to save our love.

I came back to take what was mine.