“I tried,” I said. “I was going to tell you the night your father called me into his study. I had been waiting for the right moment. I thought, maybe if he knew about the baby, he would fight for me. He would tell his father no.”
I shook my head.
“But your father did not give me the chance. He handed me a check and told me to disappear. And you sat there, Julian. You sat there and said nothing. You did not ask where I would go. You did not ask if I was okay. You just let me leave.”
“I did not know what to say,” he said quietly.
“You could have said anything,” I said. “You could have said you still loved me. You could have said you would fight for us. You could have said you were sorry. But you said nothing. So I took the money and I left. And when I found out I was pregnant, I decided you did not deserve to know.”
“That was not your decision to make,” he said, a flash of anger crossing his face.
“You are absolutely right,” I said. “It was not my decision. It was yours. You made the decision when you chose your father’s approval over your wife. When you chose silence over love. When you chose Victoria Ashford over the mother of your children.”
He flinched.