Chapter 469
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Chapter 469:
Gaston stood in the hallway staring at the closed door. A low, ragged sound tore from his throat. He drove his fist into the wall. The white pastry box dropped from his other hand, the delicate French desserts shattering against the hardwood floor.
He walked to the bar, poured three fingers of neat whiskey, and threw it back in one motion.
His cell phone buzzed. It was Carter.
“Speak,” Gaston said, his voice laced with venom.
“Whoa — easy, killer,” Carter said, his tone unusually measured. “You sound like a man who just got locked out of his own bedroom p>
𝖬оѕ𝘵 𝘳𝘦ad 𝗍𝗁𝗶s 𝘄𝘦𝖾𝗸 𝗈ո 𝗴𝘢𝗅ո𝗼𝘃е𝗅ѕ.𝘤𝗈𝗆
Gaston wrenched his silk tie loose and began pacing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He said nothing.
“Listen to me,” Carter said. “Jocelyn isn’t a dramatic woman. If she’s built a fortress around herself, it’s not because she’s throwing a tantrum. It’s because something made her feel fundamentally unsafe p>
Gaston stopped pacing.
His mind cut cleanly through the red haze of his anger. He had forced Isabelle Sterling to apologize that morning. Isabelle was a venomous snake — she would never simply say sorry and walk away. She must have found a way to inject poison into Jocelyn’s ear before leaving.
His eyes turned lethal. He hung up on Carter and immediately dialed his head of security.
“Pull the audio and video feeds from the Wolfe Hotel penthouse office — this morning,” Gaston said, his voice cold and precise. “I want to hear every single word Isabelle Sterling said to my wife p>
Five days later, the morning sun crept through the blinds of Carmen’s Chelsea apartment, casting long shadows across the living room.
Carmen sat frozen on the sofa, the glowing screen of her laptop illuminating her pale, exhausted face. The past five days had been a psychological torture chamber. She had barely eaten. She had barely slept.
A sharp chime rang from the laptop speakers.
An email had arrived. The sender was the encrypted server of the Geneva genetics laboratory.
Carmen’s hands trembled so violently she could barely type the sixteen-character decryption key. Her heart hammered against her ribs like something trapped.
The PDF loaded slowly onto the screen.
Carmen didn’t look at the complex genetic sequencing charts. Her eyes dropped immediately to the bold text at the very bottom of the page.
Probability of Maternity: 99.99%. The biological relationship is supported.
The words burned into her retinas.
The lie was dead. The phantom was real. The child she had mourned — the child Ferris had sworn was turned to ash — had been alive the entire time. He had hugged her. He had called her Auntie.
Carmen pressed both hands over her mouth. A ragged, agonizing sound tore from her throat. She collapsed sideways onto the sofa, sobbing with a force that felt as though her ribs were splintering.
She cried for the lost years. She cried for the manipulation. But most of all, she cried for Aaden.
Thirty minutes later, the tears stopped.