Chapter 1053
[ 732 words ]
Leanne and Ivanna were a mess, their sobs wracking the quiet room.
Leanne pleaded, her voice trembling with desperation. “But you and Mom-after all those years together…” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Even if we’re not your real children, you’ve always been a father to us. That’s how it’s always felt.”
“If you do this… you’ll be ending it for good with Mom. Please don’t you care about that? Doesn’t any of it matter to you?”
She clung to the word “love,” repeating it, hoping to pull Derek back from the edge. She never realized how twistedly ironic “love” sounded to him now.
Derek let out a cold, mirthless laugh. “Your mother and I are over. Don’t talk to me about love or feelings,” he spat. Each word was sharp with disdain. Whatever tenderness or longing that might have once been there gone. All that remained was revulsion.
He felt sick, disgusted… mostly at himself. After learning that none of Adelle’s children were his, any affection he’d once had for her was now dominated by bitter loathing. He had been a fool-blind enough to sacrifice everything for Adelle. He’d pushed every other woman out of his life-even plotted to destroy Lacey.
Lacey…
The thought of her flickered through his mind: the woman who would wait up for him in the lamplight, no matter how late he came home, always standing by the window, her silhouette patient and unyielding. And in the end, how had he repaid her? For Adelle, he’d cast her aside. Lacey had begged him to stay at first; then, one day, she simply walked away, leaving no trace of the vulnerability she’d shown.
She’d even managed to trick him one final time—so much for all that “devotion.” When she left, she took Black Gate’s most crucial asset with her.
Yet even now, he couldn’t deny it: back then, Lacey had given everything for him. More than Adelle ever had, or ever would.
That realization set something alight in his chest-regret, burning instantly into a consuming rage.
Derek’s roar filled the room, making Leanne shrink back, tears streaming harder
now.
Ivanna, stubborn and headstrong as ever, put up a fierce fight when the guards came to take her blood, wrestling against their grip-but in the end, it didn’t matter. They took what they needed.
Rain was a rare sight in Litamark. Tonight, though, a violent storm raged outside. Blinding lightning and thunder shattered the gloom.
The test results arrived, undeniable in their finality. As everyone expected, neither Leanne nor Ivanna were his biological daughters.
Lightning split the sky once more, illuminating Derek’s face in its ghostly white glow. A heartbeat later, he was laughing—broken, manic laughter that echoed through the house. He clenched the DNA report so tightly, the corners tore.
He kept laughing, lost in something dark and bottomless.
Leroy stood off to the side, his eyes sharp as blades as he watched the sisters, their faces taut with fear.
Leanne huddled in Ivanna’s arms, looking up at her sister with terrified, pleading eyes. “Dad… has he… lost it?”
He had. The test results, the wild laughter—it all told her there was no hope.
Derek finally stopped, breathless from laughter, fixing a flat gaze on the girls.
“Take them away. Send them to their mother—and their brother.”
None of them were his. Not one. The moment Ivanna fled with Leanne, Derek had known something was wrong had known, deep down, that Adelle’s loyalty had never truly belonged to him. But even then, some stubborn hope had held on, praying at least one child would be his, that her betrayal wasn’t complete.
But he’d been wrong. Painfully, humiliatingly wrong.
Not a single child was his.
Every scrap of trust, every ounce of blind hope, all smashed apart. The woman he’d cherished, the woman for whom he’d turned his world upside down, had betrayed
1.n
him completely utterly, and for years.
“Dad, please! We’re sorry!” Leanne sobbed, clutching at any last chance for mercy. “We’ll never go near Susanna again! Please, forgive us… Don’t do this!”
Even now, she clung to the naïve belief that all of this was because of what she and Ivanna had done to Susanna. In some twisted way, maybe it was.
“Dad-!”
“Take them away!” Derek thundered.
Leroy gestured sharply, and at once, several burly bodyguards moved in, dragging the sisters out. Ivanna’s lips were pressed shut in mute. protest but Leanne’s cries echoed down the hall, growing fainter and fainter, until at last, silence filled the house.
Derek closed his eyes, forcing out a breath. “Leroy.”
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