Chapter 5 - The Confrontation at the DrakeAt 10:00 P.M., the heavy double doors of the executive suite were pushed open.
I walked inside, wearing my midnight-blue silk gown, flanked by Lucas Vance carrying three thick leather volumes of financial audits.
Noah and Sophie remained downstairs in the hotel’s private, high-security VIP lounge under the care of Lucas’s senior associate team and two private security guards.
Ethan jumped up from his chair the second he saw me step through the doorway.
He looked completely hollowed out—the untouchable six-billion-dollar tycoon stripped of every shred of his artificial pride, his storm-gray eyes overflowing with heavy, unadulterated tears that cut clean tracks through his stubble.
"Claire..." Ethan wept softly, taking three fast, trembling steps toward me, dropping flat onto his knees right on the plush carpet before my feet.
The broad-shouldered billionaire knelt flat on the floorboards, his hands clutching together in a desperate, groveling plea.
"Claire... my God... forgive me..." Ethan sobbed, pressing his forehead against the carpet at my feet. "I was a fool... I was controlled by my mother... she told me you were trying to trap me... she told me you didn't love me... I didn't know you were pregnant... I swear to God I didn't know!"
I looked down at the man groveling at my feet with zero anger, zero bitterness, and zero hatred.
"You didn't know because you didn't ask, Ethan," I said softly, my voice quiet, flat, and absolute. "When I came to your office ten years ago trying to tell you about the ultrasound... you threw thirty dollars at my face and told me to disappear before your mother called the police."
Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, a fresh, agonizing wave of sobs tearing from his chest.
"I will give you half the company, Claire!" Ethan pleaded frantically, looking up with bloodshot, weeping eyes. "I will give Noah and Sophie fifty percent of the voting equity! I will put their names on every building in Chicago! Just let me be their father... please... let me hold my children!"
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I took one step backward, pulling my silk skirt away from his reach.
"You can't buy ten years of missed heartbeats with stock equity, Ethan," I revealed, every word dropped into the quiet room like a final, unbroken truth. "Noah doesn't want your buildings. He wants startup capital for his own software firm. And Sophie doesn't want your name. She already has mine."
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