Chapter 4 - The Rain-Slicked Confession
"You cannot just blow up my entire life and then disappear again!" Ethan shouted over the roar of the downpour.
I ripped my arm out of his grasp, ignoring the way my skin burned where he had touched me.
"Your life was built on a foundation of lies, Ethan!" I screamed back, the rain plastering my hair to my face.
"I just did you a favor by knocking down the walls!"
Ethan ran a frustrated hand through his soaking wet hair, looking completely lost and devastated.
"Why didn't you fight harder?" he demanded, his voice thick with desperate anguish.
"If you were carrying my children, why didn't you kick down my door and force me to listen?"
I stared at him, feeling a sudden wave of exhausting, overwhelming sorrow wash over me.
"Because love shouldn't be a war, Ethan," I said softly, the fight suddenly draining out of my bones.
"I shouldn't have to battle your father, your security, and your silence just to tell you that you were a father."
He stepped closer, the heat radiating from his chest cutting through the freezing Seattle air.
"I was a coward," Ethan confessed, tears mixing seamlessly with the rain on his cheeks.
"When my father told me you aborted our baby for a payoff, it broke me so completely that I stopped living."
"I let myself become a ghost, just floating through the life he designed for me."
He looked past me, staring through the tinted windows of the Maybach at the four little silhouettes inside.
"But I am not a ghost anymore, Emma," he vowed, his jaw setting with a newfound, terrifying determination.
"I am going to fix this, and I am going to earn the right to know my children."
I shook my head, refusing to let his beautiful words break down the fortress I had built.
"You don't get it, Ethan," I warned him, opening the car door wider.
"I am not the helpless, naive college girl your father bullied five years ago."
"I am the CEO of Vanguard Innovations, and I have more money than God."
Ethan’s eyes widened in sheer shock as the reality of my words finally crashed into him.
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"If Victor tries to come for my children, I will crush his empire into absolute dust," I promised.
I climbed into the car and slammed the heavy door, leaving the groom standing entirely alone in the storm.
