“No……”
“Cedric loves me. He would never do this to me.”
The redness around Cedric's eyes deepened.
He seized my hand, his voice breaking.
“I'm sorry, Hailey. I regret everything.”
“I came back to stop all of this from happening.”
“You have no idea what happened in those ten years.”
He glanced at the time, then pulled me back down to sit.
He drew a long breath, as if steeling himself for something enormous.
“The first year after I leave, you'll face months of online harassment.”
“You'll lose your job. And the baby you're carrying will miscarry because of it.”
Baby?
My breath stopped.
I finally understood the guilt in his eyes.
My father's last wish before he died was to see me married, with children, safe and happy.
But my body had never cooperated. I couldn't conceive.
So many of the Gilbert family elders had whispered about it behind my back.
Cedric always shielded me from them.
He went with me to every injection, every prescription, every temple where I knelt and prayed.
And every time another doctor told us it was hopeless, every single time, he would still squeeze out a smile and tell me it would be okay.
I had made peace with the idea that we would never have a child of our own.
And now fate had chosen this moment to play its cruelest joke.
My hand drifted slowly to my lower belly. I couldn't help asking.
“What do you mean about my job?”
Cedric lowered his head, his voice sinking almost to nothing.
“I never meant for things to get that far.”
“But we know each other too well.”
“I was afraid you'd sense something was off and come looking, that you'd disrupt the life Evelyn and I were building.”
“So I hired a paid troll farm to flood you, drown out anything you might notice.”
“At first it was just supposed to stall you for a few days. Then it spiraled out of our control.”
“You lost your job because of it, and your mother cut ties with you……”
“My mom?”
My eyes went wide.
Then, almost immediately, the pieces fell into place.
Evelyn had studied journalism. No one understood how to steer public opinion better than she did.
If she wanted to, she could do more than destroy my reputation. She could tear my family apart.
My mother had been proud her entire life. Unyielding.
She would never allow herself to have a daughter the world called a murderer.
My heart clenched so hard it hurt.
I could almost see it.
My mother's face, wrecked with grief, the moment she severed me from her life.
“You knelt at my father's grave, Cedric. You swore you'd take care of me and my mother.”
I shoved him away.
Tears spilled before I could stop them.
“You swore it to a dead man.”
“Hurting me is one thing—why did you have to drag her into it!”
Cedric's expression turned desperate.
He scrambled to explain, panic written across his face.
“I didn't mean to. I swear I didn't mean to.”
“Once things blew up, I knew something was wrong.”
“I tried to have someone check on you, but that's when Evelyn got pregnant.”
“It was our first child. We both took it seriously.”
“By the time her pregnancy was stable, I got the news—your mother had locked herself in the house and burned charcoal until she died.”
“And the grief destroyed you. You lost the baby, and the doctors had to take your womb.”
Cedric's voice was barely above a whisper.
But every word landed like a knife twisting somewhere I couldn't reach.
I closed my eyes and fought to hold back the hatred surging through me.
