Chapter 3 - Shadows in the Ward
The taxi ride to City General Hospital was conducted in heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the quiet sniffles of the two girls riding beside me. I held both of their tiny hands tightly in mine, overwhelmed by a dizzying mixture of fierce protective instinct and crushing guilt. For seven years, I had lived a life of luxury, building my architecture firm, believing I was moving forward, while my daughters and the woman I loved were struggling in poverty.
When we arrived at the hospital, the sterile smell of antiseptic hit my nostrils. Lily led me down a dimly lit hallway on the third floor, past crowded wards and overworked nurses. She stopped outside Room 314.
I pushed the door open gently.
Lying in the narrow hospital bed was Maya. She was pale, thin, and hooked up to monitoring machines, but even under the harsh fluorescent lights, her beauty was undeniable. Seeing her shattered what was left of my composure.
At the sound of the door opening, Maya turned her head weakly. Her eyes widened when she saw the twins, followed immediately by horror when her gaze landed on me.
“Ethan...?” she gasped, her voice barely a breath. “No... no, it can’t be. You’re... you’re supposed to be...”
“I’m alive, Maya,” I said, stepping up to her bedside, my eyes overflowing with tears. “I’ve been alive this whole time. I never stopped looking for you until... until I was lied to.”
Maya looked at the twins, who immediately scrambled onto the side of her bed, hugging her fragile body carefully. “Lily, Mia... what did you do?”
“We brought Daddy,” Mia said proudly. “Just like you wrote in your diary.”
Maya looked back at me, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. “Victoria told me you died in a car crash seven years ago, right after I found out I was pregnant. She came to my apartment... she gave me photos of a wrecked car. She gave me a death certificate. She said your family blamed me for your death and that if I ever tried to contact them, they would use their power to take my babies away.”
I felt a cold rage burning deep in my chest. Victoria hadn't just lied; she had orchestrated a cruel, systematic destruction of Maya’s life. She had fabricated my death, manufactured fake legal documents, and threatened a frightened, pregnant young woman into going into hiding.
“Maya,” I whispered, taking her frail hand in mine. Her fingers were ice-cold. “I never died. I was told you abandoned me. I was told you took money from my family and left the country.”
“I never took a penny,” Maya sobbed. “I was so scared, Ethan. I raised them alone. But last month, I fell ill... heart complications. I knew I didn’t have much time. I wrote letters to you, leaving them in my notebook, hoping that someday the girls would find out who their father really was. I never imagined they would go look for you tonight.”
Before I could answer, the door to the room burst open.
May you like
Two men in dark suits stepped into the room, followed closely by Victoria and a woman I recognized all too well—my own mother, Eleanor Vance.
“Ethan, step away from those people right now,” my mother commanded, her voice icy and uncompromising. “This circus ends tonight.”
