Chapter 11
“What did you do?”
She did not touch it.
“I assume you’ve discovered something you’ve decided to blame on me.”
“Emails.
Phone logs.
Server records.”
Her expression barely moved.
“What about them?”
“You intercepted messages from Cassidy.”
Silence.
“Mom.”
She walked toward the window.
“I protected you.”
The room became very still.
Declan whispered:
“From my children?”
Eleanor turned.
“So they are yours.”
My hands went cold.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You suspected.”
She looked at me.
“You were divorcing.”
“I was pregnant.”
“You claimed to be.”
Declan stared at his mother.
“You read the ultrasound email.”
“Yes.”
The word landed like glass breaking.
He stepped backward.
I watched something collapse inside him.
“You saw it.”
“Yes.”
“Three babies.”
“Yes.”
“And you deleted it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Eleanor’s composure finally cracked.
“Because you were finally free!”
Declan stared.
She continued.
“That marriage was destroying you.”
I laughed.
“The marriage was destroying him?”
Eleanor ignored me.
“You were distracted.
Weak.
You were allowing her to interfere with decisions that affected thousands of employees.”
“I loved her.”
“You were obsessed with pleasing her.”
“I was terrible at pleasing her!”
“Exactly.”
Declan looked bewildered.
Eleanor’s voice sharpened.
“She was never going to accept our world.
Every development project became an ethical debate.
Every business relationship became a question of values.
She wanted you to apologize for the very things that built this family.”
“So you erased my children?”
“I believed she was manipulating you.”
“You kept doing it after the divorce.”
“I believed it was better.”
“For whom?”
“For everyone!”
Declan slammed his hand against the table.
“THERE WERE THREE BABIES!”
The sound echoed.
I had never heard him shout at his mother.
Eleanor went pale.
“They needed stability.”
“They needed their father.”
“They had Cassidy.”
“And I needed them!”
Silence.
Eleanor looked at him for a long moment.
Then her expression changed.
Not guilt.
Something almost like pity.
“You don’t understand.”
Declan’s voice went flat.
“Then explain.”
Her eyes moved to me.
I suddenly sensed another door in the room.
One I had not known existed.
“Eleanor,” I whispered.
She said nothing.
Declan stepped closer.
“What don’t I understand?”
His mother sat down.
For the first time, she looked old.
Then she said:
“I didn’t intercept Cassidy’s messages because I doubted the children were yours.”
My heartbeat slowed.
Declan frowned.
“What?”
Eleanor’s hands folded tightly in her lap.
“I intercepted them because I knew they were.”