I looked at my exhausted, hollow–eyed father by my side–and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Tears poured out as I broke down in sobs.
After a long while, I reached my trembling hand slowly toward my belly.
The moment my fingertips touched the flatness beneath the blanket, I completely collapsed.
“Dad… the baby…”
My father’s tears fell onto the pillow beside me.§
It was a long time before he could bring himself to speak. “We couldn’t save it, Laura… Dad really… really tried everything.”} A crushing wave of despair surged through me.
Just as I was about to speak again, the hospital room door burst open. Everett stumbled in, disheveled and panicked.}}
The moment he saw me, he dropped to his knees with a heavy thud at the side of my bed.
My father slapped him across the face, and raised his hand to signal the guards to throw him out.
But I stopped him.§
“…Dad.”
After eight years of entanglement, there had to be an ending.
My father understood what I meant.
He sighed deeply, turned, and left the room. But before going, he looked back at me again and again, saying, “Laura, this time, don’t be softhearted again.”
Once he left, it was as though Everett could finally breathe.
He rushed forward, grabbing my hand tightly, his eyes red with remorse.
“I’m sorry, Laura. I swear, I never thought it would come to this. Before locking you in the cold storage, I checked with the doctor. They said you were close to delivery, and as long as you were monitored carefully, it wouldn’t be too dangerous.“}
“I… I never imagined it would cost us our baby…“}
“Laura, I know you never liked Maeve. But I promise–if you can forgive me, I’ll cut ties with her completely. I swear. Just please forgive me, okay?”
Looking at his guilt–ridden face, the memories of the past eight years flooded through my mind like a movie reel.
We first met in my father’s office.
At the time, my father was recruiting for a competent personal assistant.
Everett had been recommended by some no–name headhunting agency–just a freshly graduated nobody.
In fact, my father had already picked someone else.
He was just about to cancel the remaining interviews when, right at the office entrance, a chandelier suddenly came crashing down–and Everett, bleeding profusely from his head, was shielding me beneath it.
If it hadn’t been for him, I probably would have died that day.
That single act earned him a place by my father’s side.
Everett wasn’t particularly smart.
He’d never seen the world. His skills in handling people, making decisions–everything about him was mediocre.}
But my father was a man who never forgot a debt.
Because Everett had saved my life, he took him under his wing and trained him with the same patience and care he once used to teach
- me.
Even more than that–my father began teaching him how to do business.
I grew up surrounded by wealth and privilege. The boys around me had all followed neatly paved roads set out by their families. But Everett was different.
He was like a wild weed–desperately clawing for a place in this polished, high–society soil.
It was my father who first noticed I had feelings for him.”
On my birthday, he called me into his study for a long talk.
“Laura,” he said gently, “Everett isn’t right for you. I know what draws you to him–but that kind of wild vitality he has… It’ll hurt you.” “You need someone who comes from a world like yours.”
But before he could finish, I cut him off.
And after that night, I never gave my father another chance to speak on the matter.
I packed up my things and moved out of the family estate.
I even resigned from my position in the family business.
