Chapter 4 - The House of Cards
“I didn't know anything!” I screamed, throwing the papers off my lap. They fluttered violently across the hospital floor, scattering like dry leaves. “Ethan, look at me! Use your brain! If I knew you were sterile, why would I have spent months trying to convince you to go back to the fertility clinic? Why would I have kept trying for a baby with you?”
Ethan stepped backward, away from the bed, away from me, and crucially, away from the bassinet. The brief flash of fatherly connection I had witnessed earlier was entirely gone, completely erased by the seed of doubt Sienna had planted.
“Because you needed a scapegoat,” Ethan said, his voice hardening into the familiar, arrogant mask he used when negotiating corporate takeovers. “You wanted a family, and I was holding you back. You found someone else, got pregnant, and figured you could just tell me it was a miracle. And when I filed for divorce because I felt something was wrong, you kept up the act.”
My mother marched right up to him, pointing a finger directly at his chest. “You listen to me, Ethan Walker. My daughter has never looked at another man since the day she met you. If there is a lie in these papers, it did not come from her. You are a fool if you let that manipulative woman destroy your relationship with your own daughter.”
“My daughter?” Ethan let out a hollow, bitter laugh. “The medical documents say otherwise, Karen. Science doesn't lie. People do.”
He turned on his heel, heading for the door.
“Ethan, wait!” I called out, my voice cracking with emotion. “If you walk out that door right now, believing this, you are discarding your own flesh and blood. Request a DNA test. Right now. The hospital can do an expedited swab. If you’re so sure science doesn't lie, let’s let science settle it.”
Ethan paused with his hand on the stainless steel door handle. He stood completely still for several long seconds, his back to me. I could see the muscles in his shoulders twisting tightly beneath his shirt.
“Fine,” he said, not turning around. “I’ll arrange for an expedited paternity test through my lawyer. But if the results come back negative, Clara… I will make sure the entire world knows what you did. I will make sure you don't get a single dime of alimony, and I will ruin your reputation.”
“And when it comes back positive?” I challenged, my tears drying up, replaced by a cold, sharp anger of my own. “What will you do then, Ethan?”
He didn't answer. He simply opened the door and walked out, slamming it shut behind him.
The moment he was gone, the artificial strength that had kept me upright vanished. I collapsed back into the pillows, sobbing violently, my body shaking so hard that the surgical stitches in my abdomen throbbed with white-hot pain. My mother rushed to my side, pulling me into her arms, whispering comforting words that I couldn't fully process.
How had my life turned into this? Just an hour ago, I was a tired but peaceful new mother, celebrating the arrival of my beautiful girl. Now, I was caught in the middle of a sordid, chaotic soap opera, accused of infidelity, and facing a legal war with a man I used to trust with my life.
Amid my sobbing, a soft, high-pitched cry sounded from the bassinet.
The noise acted like an electric shock to my system. I wiped my face quickly with the back of my hand and looked over. My daughter was awake. Her tiny arms were flailing against her swaddle, her face turning red as she began to cry, hungry and disturbed by the negative energy that had filled the room.
“Bring her to me, Mom,” I choked out.
My mother carefully lifted the fragile bundle from the bassinet and placed her gently against my chest. The moment her small, warm body touched my skin, my heart rate began to slow down. I looked down at her features—the delicate slope of her nose, the tiny cleft in her chin. She looked so incredibly like Ethan it was almost uncanny. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind whose baby this was.
But if Ethan was truly diagnosed as sterile five years ago, how was this possible?
As I nursed my daughter, my mind began to race, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Sienna said she found the medical records in the basement. She said she had known for months. If she knew Ethan was sterile, and she wanted to marry him for his immense wealth and status, why would she suddenly freak out and scream “The baby couldn't exist” when she found out I had given birth?
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If she truly believed Ethan was sterile, she should have been happy or smug when I told him I had a baby, knowing it would definitively prove I cheated. Instead, she panicked. She fainted. She rushed to the hospital in her bridal robe, acting completely unhinged.
She wasn't acting like a woman who held a winning hand. She was acting like a woman whose entire house of cards was about to come crashing down.
