Chapter 10 - THE CHILD THEY LOST
Ethan stared at Rebecca.
“How do you know about that?”
Rebecca immediately regretted speaking.
Max looked away.
Ethan stood.
“Tell me.”
Rebecca swallowed.
“Vanessa told Max.”
Ethan felt cold.
“What did she say?”
Max answered.
“That you chose your father over her.”
Ethan’s mind returned to eight years earlier.
Vanessa had been twelve weeks pregnant.
Michael Cole had suffered a stroke.
Ethan spent three nights at the hospital.
Vanessa began bleeding while alone.
She drove herself to the emergency room.
By the time Ethan arrived, the pregnancy was lost.
He had blamed himself for years.
Vanessa said she forgave him.
Apparently, she had not.
Max continued.
“She said that was the night she stopped believing you would ever choose her first.”
Ethan sat.
Suddenly, Vanessa’s revenge had another layer.
She hated Michael.
Then she married Michael’s son.
Then she loved him.
Then she lost their child while Ethan sat beside Michael’s hospital bed.
Love and hatred fused.
The company became the battlefield.
Rebecca whispered:
“That doesn’t excuse anything.”
“No.”
But Ethan finally understood the emotional engine behind Vanessa’s cruelty.
It was not one grievance.
It was accumulation.
Her father.
Michael.
The miscarriage.
Ethan’s distance.
Her own ambition.
Max.
Power.
Every wound became evidence in the case she built against him.
That night Vanessa called again.
This time, she sounded calm.
“I want to settle.”
Ethan was suspicious.
“What do you want?”
“Thirty percent of the company.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the alternative.”
“I don’t need to.”
Vanessa laughed softly.
“You should.”
She sent him a photograph.
Rebecca gasped.
It showed Max’s seven-year-old son leaving school.
Taken that afternoon.
Max went white.
Vanessa spoke through the phone.
“Sign the settlement.”
Ethan’s voice hardened.
“You touch that child—”
“I haven’t touched anyone.”
“You’re threatening him.”
“No. I’m demonstrating information.”
Max grabbed the phone.
“Vanessa!”
She continued:
“Thirty percent. Custody of the Hale-related development assets. No criminal referral for the corporate transactions.”
Ethan said:
“You’re blackmailing us.”
Vanessa replied:
“Call it negotiation.”
Then she added:
“And Ethan?”
May you like
“Yes?”
“If you refuse, the next photograph won’t be taken from across the street.”
