bChapter /b255

    OLIVIA’S POV

    I looked between the both of them, even though I didn’t want to. My head told me bto /bblook /baway, to ignore them, but hearing what Adrian just said pulled me back in against bmy /bwill. bHis /bwords lodged themselves into my chest, heavy and sharp, forcing me to pay attentionb. /b

    Five years ago. The memory still burned, raw and bitter. That was part of the reason I left. Isadora had looked me straight in the eye and told Adrian she was carrying his child. She bhad /bsaid it so confidently, so convincingly, that I couldn’t bring myself to think it was ba /blie. I bmean/bb, /bthere are just some things a person doesn’t lie about. A pregnancy… a child… those bare /bsacred truths, and even at my most doubtful moments, I never thought anyone would dare use something like that as a weapon.

    And yet, I just heard it from Adrian’s own mouth. The truth. My heart thudded against my ribs as I tried to process it, but the questions came anyway–unwanted, relentless, flooding my mind faster than I could shove them back down. If she lied about that, then what else? How much of the pain I carried, the choices I made, were built on nothing but smoke and her maniption?

    I wanted to ask. God, I wanted to demand answers, to throw every burning question in my chest straight at him and at her. But I didn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t. Thest thing I wanted was for either of them to see that I cared. That this still mattered to me. That their twisted history still had the power to unsteady me. So I kept my lips sealed, biting down on the questions until they tasted like iron on my tongue.

    —

    Adrian, though he noticed. He always did. His eyes caught mine, and for a moment it was like he could read every thought I was too stubborn to say aloud. He tilted his head slightly, his voice low, but steady.

    “Yeah, you heard me right,” he said, holding my gaze without flinching. “You were there when she told me she was carrying my child.”

    Adrian didn’t stop there. His jaw tightened, his tone carrying both anger and exhaustion.“A few monthster I found out that she was lying to me. She just used that to tie me down, to keep me close, feeding me false hopes. And like a fool, I let her.”

    The air grew heavier between us. Isadora shifted, her voice sharp, cutting through the tension like ss scraping on stone. “You know there’s really no need to talk about this here, right?” she said, her eyes flicking to me only once before she focused back on Adrian. Her words were meant for him, not me. Always for him.

    But Adrian didn’t back down. His voice was louder this time, deliberate, as if he wanted every syble to stab where it hurt.”Oh, there’s every need,” he snapped. “And you know what? I’m

    b17:25 /bThub, /bSep 4

    d Olivia’s here. I want her to see this, to hear it from me. I want her to know there’s nothing going on between ius /ianymore not after what you did.”

    I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I just kept looking at them, watching two people argue over ba /bbpast /bthat had already stolen so much from me.

    Then Adrian turned his attention back to me. His eyes softened, but his words were heavy with a weight I wasn’t sure I could carry.“I don’t have a mistress. I’m not married. And I don’t have a child.” He paused, letting the silence dig deeper before he asked the question again, the one that hung between us like a de.”That’s why I’m asking, Olivia. Is he my son?”

    My chest tightened, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. The ground felt unsteady beneath me. My eyes, almost against my will, drifted toward Isadora. Her eyes widened, shock flickering across her face like lightning.

    Of course, she would be surprised. How could she not? After all, she had been the one who made me lose my pregnancy all those years ago. She thought she had erased every chance, every possibility. She thought she had left me broken with nothing left to hold onto.

    But now… here I was, still standing. Still carrying the truth she never expected me to have.

    Her gaze dropped to Charlie, who sat quietly, caught in the storm of all this chaos. He was trembling, his small shoulders stiff, fear written all over his little face as he tried to make sense of the tension around him. Isadora’s expression shifted as she looked at him, realization

    dawning slowly, painfully. I could see it in her eyes as she started to piece everything together

    every hint, every clue, every truth she had once buried but could no longer ignore.

    —

    I saw the fire in her eyes light up as she clenched her fists where she sat on the floor. There was a raw intensity in her re, the kind that told me she wanted to rip me apart, but couldn’t at least not here, not now. And some part of me liked it. No, I more than liked it I relished it. This was new to me, seeing her like this, seeing Isadora stripped of her cold, superior mask. She had humiliated me countless times in the past, dragged my name through the dirt without flinching, and broken me down when I was at my weakest. But this moment? This was going to be my turn. My way of giving her a taste of her own poison.

    I turned toward Adrian, who had been silent waiting for my response. My chest tightened for a second, but then I let the words slip out boldly.

    “Yes, Charlie is your son.”

    The air in the room changed instantly. I could practically hear Isadora’s world cracking. I watched her closely, and the sight filled me with a twisted satisfaction I couldn’t hide. Tears began to build in her eyes, glistening like broken ss. Her lips trembled, her mouth parting in shock, as though I had driven a de straight through her chest. She tried to stayposed, but the pain was written all over her face. For once, she wasn’t the one in control she was the one bleeding.

    b17:26 /bbThu/bb, /bSep b4 /b

    Et si voucher

    Adrian, on the other hand, reacted in theplete opposite way. His expression broke bopen /binto something I hadn’t seen from him in a long time–happiness. Pure, unguarded happiness. It was like I had pulled him out of a dark pit, a pit he had been drowning in for years. His eyes lit up, and for a brief second, he almost looked like a different man entirely.

    But I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t see what there was to be so happy about. Did he really think that just because I told him the truth that Charlie was his son that everything was suddenly fixed? That he could walk back into Charlie’s life as if nothing had happened? That he could y “dad” after all these years? No. That wasn’t going to happen.

    鐵

    The truth is, Charlie doesn’t need him. If it were up to me, Charlie would be better off without Adrian at all. A father like that is worse than no father at all.

    But then, before I could fully process Adrian’s strange joy, something else caught my eye something that froze me. Isadora moved. Slowly, carefully, she reached into her dress and pulled something out.

    A phone.

    My breath hitched. That was strange, impossible even. The robbers had taken everyone’s phones when this nightmare started, stripping us of any way to call for help. How did hers survive? Did they miss it somehow? Did she manage to hide it? Or… had she been holding on to it the entire time, waiting for the perfect moment?

    Questions swirled in my head, but the bigger one screamed louder: had she already called the police?

    If she hadn’t, she needed to. But the danger was real if the robbers discovered she still had her phone, she would be putting not only herself but all of us in far greater danger. Yet she didn’t seem to care about that. Her face burned with anger, her thumbs furiously flying across the screen, sending a message to someone. I hoped it was the police. God, I hoped it was the police. I wanted them here fast, before things spiraled further out of control.

    Adrian, meanwhile, broke the silence. His voice was softer than I expected, almost vulnerable.

    “A few days ago,” he said, “I asked myself when I would finally have a child of my own. I wondered if maybe it was because I was cruel to women, that I’d never had the chance to be a father. But today, hearing this…”

    b99 /b

    I cut him off before he could finish, my tone sharp and dismissive.

    “Save whatever people talk you’re about to say, Adrian. You asked me if he was your son, and I

    answered.”

    He stared at me, shocked–shocked not by my words, but by the fact that I didn’t even care to hear him out. His mouth hung slightly open, his joy faltering, as if he couldn’t believe I would

    shut him down so quickly.

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