"You never actually liked Emily, did you? All of that—indulging her, letting her run wild—it was deliberate. You were baiting her into making mistakes."
Hudson's lips curved into a half-smile, that same devil-may-care mask he always wore. But behind it, something shifted in his eyes—a flicker of genuine respect.
"Can't get anything past you, can I? You figured it out just like that." He tilted his head. "Even Emily bought it. She was convinced I'd actually fallen for her. But I could never fool you."
A chill crawled up my spine, settling deep in my bones.
"So you knew. You knew Emily bought the wrong plane tickets. Why did you let her send your parents to a disaster zone?"
"To punish them."
His expression went cold. Flat. Like a door slamming shut. The warmth drained from his eyes, replaced by something so deep and frigid it made me swallow the next question whole.
That was when I finally understood: Hudson had never forgiven his parents. Not once. Not ever.
The truth of his past was something I'd only pieced together after our marriage. Hudson's wealth, his empire—none of it came from his birth parents. He'd been abandoned two days after he was born, left on the side of a road. A local tycoon had found him, taken him in, and raised him as his own, giving the boy his surname and the name Hudson.
That man had been good to him. More than good. He'd left Hudson everything—the properties, the business, the fortune. And when Hudson was diagnosed with a serious illness as a teenager, his adoptive father had spared no expense tracking down his biological parents. He'd even paid them a sum of money, asking only that they donate bone marrow to save the boy they'd thrown away.
Hudson recovered. His adoptive father did not. The old man's health deteriorated, and within a few years, he was gone.
That was when Hudson's biological parents resurfaced, promising to take care of him. They had an explanation ready: it wasn't them who'd abandoned him, they said. It was his grandparents. Too many children in the family. Hudson had been one too many, so they'd left him on the roadside. His real parents, they claimed, had searched for him for years.
Hudson didn't buy it. He couldn't. Whatever love they offered, he had no way to return it. But out of a sense of duty—conscience, maybe—he'd lived with them for several years. Partly to observe. Partly to give them a chance. And partly, I think, because the bitterness and resentment inside him needed somewhere to go.
I hadn't known any of this before the wedding. When we first met, I'd naively assumed Hudson and his parents had a decent relationship—distant, maybe, but only because he wasn't the type to show affection easily.
We'd been introduced through his parents, in fact. He'd chosen me because my social circle was small, my family background uncomplicated. Practical. Low-maintenance. Good enough to build a life with.
So he married me.
We fell in love after the wedding, not before. And for a while, those years were genuinely happy. But Hudson never wanted children.
By the fifth year, he started pulling away. Most nights we barely exchanged three sentences. In the sixth year, he suggested separate bedrooms. By the seventh, there was Emily.
...
Tears blurred my vision. I blinked them back hard, dragging my wandering thoughts to the present, forcing myself to stay on topic.
"Why? Why suddenly decide to punish them? Did something happen? Couldn't you have just confronted them? And why drag me into it—why the divorce?"
Hudson answered without hesitation.
"Because you're one of them. And that disgusts me."
Before I could even process the words, blood trickled from his nose—bright red, sudden. He swiped at it carelessly with the back of his hand, and in that same instant something in him snapped. His whole demeanor changed. He lunged across the seat, shoved the door open, and pushed me out of the car.
