Ethan stared at him. Noah hid behind Emma. Oliver went silent, and that silence hurt most.
“I didn’t know,” Blake said. “I swear.”
Oliver looked at Emma. “Did he not want us?”
“No, baby,” she said, her voice shaking. “He didn’t know about you.”
“Why not?”
Emma stood and faced Blake.
“Because when I tried to tell you, your assistant blocked my calls. Your lawyer returned my letters unopened. Your security team threw me out of your building when I came with the medical file.”
Blake’s expression hardened. “That never happened.”
“It did.”
“I would have known.”
“You were in Singapore. I called. I emailed. I came to your office. Marissa told security I was unstable.”
At Marissa Vale’s name, Blake went still.
“She saw the ultrasound,” Emma said.
Blake stared at her, pale.
Emma ended it there. She sent the boys into the Bentley. Before getting in, she looked at him one last time.
“You humiliated me on that plane because you thought I had nothing. Now you know what you lost too.”
As the car pulled away, Blake stood alone at the curb, watching the sons he had never known disappear.
For the first time in years, Emma didn’t feel small.
But she did feel afraid.
Because Blake Harrington had just learned he was a father—and men like Blake did not accept being shut out.
At home in Lincoln Park, the boys were quiet. Their warm brick townhouse, messy with drawings, socks, toys, and breakfast smells, was nothing like Blake’s penthouse. But it was theirs.
Ethan finally burst out, “Is that man really our dad?”
“Yes,” Emma said.
“Why didn’t he come to our birthdays?”
Emma sat with them. “When I found out I was pregnant, I tried to tell him. But people around him kept me away. He didn’t know.”
“Was he mean to you?” Oliver asked.
Emma chose her words carefully. “He hurt my feelings a long time ago.”
“Did you hurt his?”
She looked down. “Maybe.”
“Are we going to live with him?” Ethan asked.
“No. This is your home.”
read more in next page
