Chapter 3 - The North Nursery
The north nursery was twice the size of the room where Grace had been kept. It smelled of fresh lemon wax and expensive baby powder—the kind imported from London that Evelyn insisted on for all family births. A glowing mahogany bassinet stood beneath the high, arched windows where the storm still lashed against the glass with unrelenting fury.
Ethan didn’t wait for his mother to follow him. He pushed the heavy double doors open, his boots heavy on the Persian carpet.
Inside, a woman in a starched white nurse’s uniform was sitting in a rocking chair by the fireplace, holding a small bundle wrapped in blue wool. She stood up instantly, her face pale with alarm.
“Mr. Caldwell! I wasn’t told—Mrs. Caldwell said no visitors until—”
“Give me my son,” Ethan said.
The nurse looked frantically toward the door as Evelyn entered the room, her footsteps measured and unhurried.
“Put the child down, Nurse Higgins,” Evelyn said, her voice cutting through the hum of the electric radiator. “Mr. Ethan is temporarily unhinged by fatigue and domestic disappointment. He does not know what he is saying.”
“I know exactly what I am saying,” Ethan said. He crossed the room in two strides, his large hands gentle as he reached out and took the bundle from the nurse’s arms.
The infant was astonishingly light. Through the thick wool blanket, Ethan felt the tiny, rapid thump of a heart against his forearm. A shock of dark hair curled against a forehead that was unmistakably, stubbornly his own. The baby let out a small, indignant squawk, then quieted as Ethan’s thumb brushed against his cheek.
“He’s mine,” Ethan whispered, the words catching in his throat. He turned back to face his mother, his eyes burning with a cold, clear light. “And Grace is my wife. Neither of us is staying in this house another hour.”
“And how do you propose to explain this to the press, Ethan?” Evelyn asked, her voice dropping into a register of cool menace that she had used to control boardrooms for thirty years. “Do you intend to tell the Wall Street Journal that your mother locked your wife in a modified panic room because she didn’t approve of her social pedigree? Do you think the markets will look kindly on a public scandal involving the Caldwell name? The lawsuits alone will tie up our capital for five years.”
“Let them,” Ethan said. He adjusted the baby in his arms, holding him securely against his chest. “I spent six months letting you convince me that business mattered more than my family. That was the last mistake I will ever make on your advice.”
“You are a fool, Ethan,” Evelyn said, stepping closer until she was standing directly beneath the crystal chandelier. “You think you can walk away from this estate, from the trust, from everything your father built? Without my signature on the family holdings, you cannot liquidate the Vancouver project without taking a forty percent loss.”
“Keep the money, Evelyn,” Ethan said, turning toward the door. “Build yourself a monument with it. Live in this mausoleum until the roof caves in. But you will never see this child again, and if you or any lawyer representing you comes within five miles of my home in Seattle, I will personally see that you spend your final years in a cell much darker than the one you built for my wife.”
May you like
He didn’t wait for her reply.
He walked down the long, carpeted corridor, past the portraits of his ancestors whose painted eyes seemed to watch him with cold disapproval from their heavy gilded frames, and down the grand staircase where Martin was waiting by the front door with Grace’s winter coat over his arm.
