Chapter 6 - The Confession of a Coward
That evening, I sent Cole to stay with my sister, telling him he was having a special movie night with his cousins. I didn't want him anywhere near the house for what was coming.
When Mark walked through the front door at 7:00 PM, he found the lights off, save for a single lamp glowing on the kitchen island.
I was sitting on the stool, the black leather binder open before me, the DNA test results resting right on top of it. Beside them lay Julian’s investigative notes on Dr. Alistair Finch and the Vance Holdings escrow fund.
Mark stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. He saw the papers. He saw my face.
The lie died in his eyes.
There was no defensive shouting this time. No dismissive gaslighting about postpartum depression. He simply stood there, his shoulders slumping, aging ten years in the span of ten seconds.
"You went to Lake Placid," he muttered, assuming I had already tracked down the doctor.
"I didn't have to," I said, my voice dead and cold. "You left the receipts right in your safe, Mark. One point two million dollars. That’s what our son was worth to you? That’s what you traded his life for?"
Mark walked over to the island, his knees buckling slightly as he dragged a stool out and sat down opposite me. He buried his face in his hands, letting out a long, ragged groan.
"Elena... you don't understand the pressure I was under," he wept, the tears leaking between his fingers. "The firm was five million in debt. Loan sharks... real, dangerous people were threatening to take the house, to ruin my father’s legacy. Cynthia came to me. She knew you were having twins. She said, *'You have two. You only expected one. Give me one, and your life goes back to normal. No one has to know. He'll be raised as a prince.'*"
"A prince?" I screamed, rising from the stool, knocking it clattering to the floor. "He is my baby! I lay in that hospital bed bleeding out, begging God to let my son live, and you were outside signing him away like a used car! You looked me in the eye for eight years! You watched me cry on their birthday every single year! You held me while I grieved a dead child that you sold!"
"I did it for us!" Mark shouted back, his face red, tears tracking through his stubble. "If I hadn't done it, we would have been on the street! Cole would have grown up in poverty! Cynthia promised me he would want for nothing! I made sure I was in his life—I took consultancy jobs with her so I could watch him grow up! I made sure he had a good life!"
"You made sure you could assuage your own pathetic guilt!" I spat, leaning over the counter, pointing a trembling finger in his face. "You didn't save us, Mark. You destroyed us. You destroyed me. And you stole eight years of that little boy’s life from his real mother."
Mark suddenly lunged forward, grabbing my wrists. His eyes were wide, manic. "Elena, listen to me! Cynthia found out today that you went to the school. She's moving Stefan. She chartered a flight to Switzerland tonight. If you call the cops, she will claim the boy was legally adopted through an overseas agency with falsified international papers. By the time the courts sort it out, they’ll be gone forever!"
My blood turned to pure ice. "What did you say?"
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"She's taking him out of the country, Elena!" Mark pleaded, his grip tightening. "Her private jet takes off from the executive airfield at nine o'clock! If you want to see your son again, we have to go right now!"
***
