Chapter 151: My Stepmother

Cecilia

"Arthur—" I started, but he cut me off with a sharp gesture.

"No, Ceci. You're not seeing him. Not after everything his family put you through, not after—"

"I want to hear what he has to say," I interrupted, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. I looked at Ethan. "Is he armed? Dangerous?"

"Our security team searched him thoroughly," Ethan said, his eyes moving to Arthur like he was checking for permission to continue. "No weapons, no obvious threats. He came alone, walked right up to the front desk and asked to see you. Said he'd wait as long as it took."

I turned to Arthur, seeing the war playing out behind his eyes—his protective instinct battling against his knowledge that I was going to do this with or without his approval.

"You'll be here," I said quietly, reaching for his hand. "Right beside me. If anything goes wrong, if he tries anything—you'll be here."

Arthur's hand tightening around mine. For a moment I thought he might refuse anyway, might order Ethan to have Ronan Grey thrown out of the hospital regardless of what I wanted.

Then he let out a long breath, his shoulders sagging slightly with defeat. "Fine. But the second I don't like how this conversation is going, it's over. Understood?"

"Understood," I agreed, relief flooding through me even as anxiety twisted my stomach into knots.

Ethan nodded and disappeared back through the door. The silence that followed felt heavy, loaded with all the things Arthur and I hadn't finished saying to each other, all the unresolved tension from our argument that had been so brutally interrupted.

The door opened again, and this time it was Ethan accompanied by two Winston security personnel flanking a man I recognized from the auction—Lord Rhys Grey's son, the heir who'd sat in that front row watching human beings be sold like merchandise

His gaze found me immediately, and something flickered across his face—recognition mixed with something that looked almost like regret.

"Miss Locke," he said, his voice carrying a cultured British accent that was softer than his father's, less sharp. "Thank you for agreeing to see me."

Arthur's hand tightened on mine, and I felt him shift slightly, positioning himself between me and Ronan in a way that was subtle but unmistakable.

The security personnel stayed by the door, their postures alert, ready to intervene at the first sign of trouble.

"You have five minutes," Arthur said, his voice cold and controlled. "Say what you came to say, and then get out."

Ronan nodded, seeming to expect nothing less. His eyes moved back to me, and I saw him take a breath like he was steeling himself for something difficult. "I came to apologize."

The words hung in the air for a moment, so unexpected that my brain struggled to process them. "Apologize for what?" I managed finally, my voice coming out sharper than I'd intended.

"For not stopping my father from killing your mother," Ronan said, and the bluntness of it—the way he just stated it like fact rather than accusation—made my chest tighten with something complicated that I couldn't quite name.

"Evelyn. My stepmother. I'm sorry I failed to protect her."

My mind reeled, trying to make sense of what he was saying, trying to reconcile this man standing before me with the image I'd built of the Grey family heir—cold, calculating, complicit in all of his family's crimes.

"Your stepmother?" I repeated slowly, the words feeling strange on my tongue.

Ronan's expression shifted into something that might have been genuine sadness. "She married my father when I was nine years old. I was—" He paused, seeming to search for the right words. "I was a difficult child. Angry at my father for remarrying so soon after my mother's death, resentful of this stranger who was trying to take her place."

His hands clenched at his sides. "But Evelyn was kind to me. Patient. She'd sit with me when I had nightmares, help me with my schoolwork, listen when I needed to talk. She treated me like I mattered, like I was more than just the Grey family heir who needed to be molded into something acceptable."

The image he was painting—of my mother as a caring stepmother, as someone who'd shown genuine affection to a grieving child—felt wrong somehow, incompatible with the woman who'd abandoned me without a backward glance, who'd agreed to help destroy my life for money.

"She showed me pictures of you once," Ronan continued, his voice getting quieter. "Her daughter back in America. You were maybe five or six in the photo, gap-toothed and grinning, holding up some drawing you'd made. She spoke of you happily, saying you're a very smart girl."

Something twisted in my chest—grief or rage or both tangled together so tightly I couldn't separate them. "She had a choice," I said, my voice coming out harsh. "She chose to leave me. Chose to marry your father and start a new life and pretend I didn't exist."

"I know," Ronan said, and there was genuine regret in his voice. "I'm not trying to excuse what she did to you, Miss Locke. I'm just—I'm trying to explain that she wasn't entirely the monster you probably think she was. She was complicated. Flawed. Desperate in ways I didn't understand until much later."

He took another breath, his eyes never leaving mine. "When I was younger—maybe eleven or twelve—I used to joke that I'd marry you when I grew up. That gap-toothed girl in the photo who'd drawn that terrible picture."

Beside me, I heard Arthur's glass hit the table with enough force that I was surprised it didn't shatter, the sound sharp and violent in the quiet hospital room. .

Ronan seemed to register Arthur's reaction and had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "That was a long time ago," he said quickly. "Childhood fantasy, nothing more. I'm not—I didn't come here to make some kind of inappropriate declaration. I came to apologize and to give you information."

"Then do it," Arthur said, his voice dangerous. "Apologize and leave."

Ronan's expression shifted into something darker, more bitter. "The truth is, I never liked the Grey family. Never wanted to be part of what they represented, what they did. When Evelyn ran—when she finally escaped—I was actually relieved. Hoped she'd made it somewhere safe, somewhere far away from my father's reach."

His hands clenched into fists at his sides. "But then I heard him talking. Heard him tell his associates that the runaway wife needed to be dealt with, that she knew too much, that she couldn't be allowed to live. I tried to stop him—tried to argue that she'd been gone, that she wasn't a threat, that killing her would only draw attention we didn't need."

"He didn't listen," Ronan continued, his voice dropping lower. "Of course he didn't. Lord Rhys Grey doesn't listen to anyone, least of all his disappointing son who's never quite lived up to the family legacy. So he had her killed and made it look like suicide, and there was nothing I could do except watch it happen and hate myself for being too weak to stop it."

The words settled over me like a weight, confirmation of what I'd suspected but had never been able to prove—that my mother's death hadn't been suicide, that Lord Rhys Grey eliminated a problem, to silence someone who knew too much.

"And then," Ronan said, his voice taking on a quality I couldn't quite identify, "I saw that my father's people had grabbed two targets—a man and a woman, both connected to Evelyn. Both asking questions about her death, digging into things that should have stayed buried."