Chapter 64: Confronting Her Father
The moment her father dropped the words Watson Group, everything changed. The woman across from him blinked, recalibrated, and softened by several degrees. She wasn’t wrong—at the Watson Group, even support staff were paid obscenely well.
“You already have a daughter,” she said with a practiced smile. “So why are you so set on having a biological child? And… does your daughter approve of you remarrying?”
Cora, eavesdropping from the next table, almost applauded. Smart. Direct. No wonder her father looked impressed with this one.
He faltered. “Well…”
“If your daughter’s married, why not enjoy a few quiet years and become a grandpa?” the woman went on, unblinking. “You’re not some magnate who needs an heir. If she’s as filial as you say, she won’t abandon you—blood or not.”
Point, clean and sharp. Ask him the thing I can’t, Cora thought, throat tight.
Her father drew a breath, then leveled. “To be honest, I want someone to inherit what I’ve built. Over the years I’ve saved… not a fortune, but tens of thousands.”
The woman’s posture thawed. Cora’s did the opposite.
Tens of thousands? Her fingers curled into fists. When? How? And if he had it, why leave Mom chained to that ‘debt’ all these years?
A colder thought slid in: Has he been in on it with Grandma the whole time?
Julian’s palm came down gently over Cora’s knuckles—wait.
Her father continued, almost buoyant with candor. “My daughter married into a wealthy family. She’s pregnant. Her in-laws promised: if the baby is safely born, there’ll be a seven-figure gift. I have no sons. Once she’s gone to her husband’s family, who spends my money? There should be an heir.”
Lightning, point-blank. The woman’s eyes widened. Cora’s vision went white. He wasn’t just planning a new family—he was already budgeting her future “gift” and assigning it to a child who didn’t exist yet.
The woman recovered first. “Then let’s revisit this when that money’s in your hands. If you secure it, I have no objections.”
“Really?” he blurted, thrilled.
She rose with a small, decisive smile. “I have to run. Thank you for the coffee.”
She glided past. Cora kept her head down. As the woman passed Julian, her gaze snagged on him, hungry and unapologetic, before she drifted out.
Only then did Cora stand. Through the window she could still see that elegant silhouette. Younger than Mom by a decade on looks alone. Is that why? Because she’s pretty, and Mom is tired? The thought landed like a stone.
Her father turned to leave and froze. Cora stood right there, eyes raw from holding back tears. The smile on his face died mid-curve.
“Cora—What… how—”
“Dad.” She sat opposite him, voice steady through sheer force. “Let’s talk.”
He glanced from his daughter to the tall man a few tables behind her and understood: she knew. He sank back into his chair.
Silence pressed in. Julian stayed where he was, unreadable, a guardian shadow in Cora’s periphery.
“What is this, Dad?” Cora asked quietly.
“You already heard,” he muttered, gaze skittering away. “Why ask?”
“Because I want to hear it from you,” she said, her voice catching. “Why?”
He exploded, not with rage but with grievance. “Do you know how I’ve lived? Do you know what it’s like in our village—to be a man with no child? I’ve been a joke for years. It’s humiliating.”
“And me?” Cora’s words struck like flint. “Am I no one? You told me for twenty-three years I was enough for you. If you weren’t satisfied with me and with Mom, why didn’t you divorce her years ago? Why sneak around now?”
Color flooded his face. He said nothing.
“So this is the plan,” Cora pushed on, relentless. “If you meet someone ‘good,’ you go home, drop the news, divorce, and start over. If you can’t do better, you stay, let Mom keep cooking and cleaning and swallowing Grandma’s insults like she has for decades. In your mind, because she ‘can’t have children,’ the mere fact you didn’t dump her earlier makes you a saint, right? Even if you build another home, she’s supposed to be grateful.”
His mouth opened. No sound came out. She had spoken the quiet part he would never say aloud.
Tears broke loose, hot and useless. The man who tucked me in. The man I called Dad. Did he ever really love us? The family she’d clung to—steam-thin, ready to split at a breath.
“Do you have nothing else to say to me?” she asked, empty now, watching a stranger wear her father’s face.
He swallowed. “Cora… can you not tell your mother yet?”
There it was. Not regret. Not apology. Containment.
“If you’ve wanted this for so long, why keep her?” Cora’s voice rose, sharp with grief. “She’s in her forties, Dad. How many more years do you plan to waste? She has never wronged you or this family. Grandma screams and hits—where were you? Uncle and Aunt bleed us dry—where were you? When Mom learned she couldn’t carry, why didn’t you leave then? You could have a child my age by now.”
Her hands shook. “How are you this selfish? How is this family this selfish? You squeeze every last bit out of my mother and then toss her aside?”
“It’s not like that,” he said weakly. “I’ll take care of her. Your grandmother kept your engagement money—we’ll buy an apartment. We’ll put it in your mother’s name. Then the family owes her nothing.”
Cora stared at him.
An apartment—bought with my engagement payout—as severance for a lifetime?
Absurd. Beyond absurd.