Chapter 8
The private physician confirmed what neither of us doubted.
Theo was my son.
Quietly.
No ceremony.
No announcement.
Anwen cried anyway.
I did not.
Not until later.
Alone.
Because certainty has weight even when you already believe.
I visited Felice that afternoon.
She had left the estate voluntarily and moved into her family’s city apartment.
No guards.
No public disgrace.
I wanted answers.
She expected negotiation.
I could see it.
“Did the test confirm?”
“Yes.”
Her face changed.
Pain.
Real.
“You slept with her before me.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you look betrayed by that?”
She sat.
“I’m not.”
She looked exhausted.
“I’m betrayed by the fact that she gave you something I never could first.”
There.
Not fertility.
Not biology as destiny.
Order.
She wanted to be the woman who introduced the next version of my life.
Wife first.
Then family.
Then children.
Anwen’s son existed before her planned sequence.
He proved my life had already branched somewhere she did not control.
“So you hid him.”
“At first.”
“And later?”
She stared at her hands.
“Later I thought I could fix it.”
Fix.
Always dangerous.
She imagined keeping Theo safe and distant until after marriage.
Then once she became my wife, she would bring him forward carefully.
She believed I would admire her compassion.
I would learn Anwen was “unreliable.”
Theo would spend increasing time at our estate.
Eventually Felice would become the stable maternal figure.
Not legally.
Emotionally.
“And Anwen?”
Her face hardened.
“She would have been paid to leave.”
“Would she?”
“I thought she would.”
“You took her wages.”
“So she would understand she needed structure.”
There.
Control dressed as instruction.
I leaned forward.
“You weren’t competing with Anwen.”
Felice’s eyes filled.
“You were competing with the fact that I had a life before you.”
She cried.
I continued anyway.
“And you punished a mother because her child proved you arrived second.”
That was the truth she had been avoiding.
Not inheritance.
Not scandal.
May you like
Not Mafia strategy.
Jealousy with resources.
