Till Death Do Us Apart
15. The Grandfather
Chapter 15
“I didn’t plan this, Caleb.” Tania’s hands curled into the blanket. “Do you think I wanted this? Do you think this baby belongs to someone else?”
“I don’t care whose it is.” His voice was cold enough to freeze the room over again. “Yours or mine, it doesn’t matter. You’re still the enemy’s daughter. That will never change.”
He left without another word.
Tania sat alone for a long time, one hand resting flat against her stomach, grief and something softer tangled together in her chest.
She picked up her phone and dialed Dr. Jeff.
“Uncle Jeff,” she said quietly, the moment he answered. “What do I do? I’m pregnant.”
• • •
Dr. Jeff went quiet on the other end of the line for a long moment.
“Tania, I need you to understand something. Carrying this pregnancy will put a strain on your heart it can’t afford. You’re already down to three months. This could take even that away from you.”
“Is there another way?”
“The only option that protects your remaining time is ending the pregnancy.”
Tania closed her eyes. A tear slid down her cheek, quiet and slow.
“I’m going to die anyway,” she said. “I can’t kill my baby just to buy myself a few extra weeks. If we go, we go together.”
Dr. Jeff didn’t argue with her. He simply asked her to come in for more frequent checkups, and let her go.
Somewhere in the city, Caleb’s hatred for her had found new fuel, sharper now, angrier, fed by a child he refused to believe was anything but another one of her schemes.
• • •
Tania was cleared to leave the hospital two days later. Greta arrived to take her home, but before she could go, a nurse stopped her.
“Doctor Ashton wants a word before you leave.”
Doctor Ashton, the specialist who’d treated her hypothermia, sat her down in his office, his expression serious.
“Why haven’t you told your husband about your heart condition?” he asked.
“It won’t change anything,” Tania said simply. “Please, keep it between us.”
“Heart transplants have come a long way. A man with his resources could find you a donor faster than almost anyone else in this country. Should I speak with him?”
“No.” Tania shook her head firmly. “Please. Don’t tell him.”
She thanked him and left with Greta, unaware of the way Doctor Ashton stared after her, something tugging at the back of his memory that he couldn’t quite place.
Her face. He was sure he’d seen it somewhere before, years ago, in a photograph he couldn’t remember the context of.
• • •
Caleb sat in the dim living room of his grandfather’s estate that evening when Greta’s call came in.
“She spent a long time speaking privately with the doctor before she left, sir.”
Caleb’s mouth curved into something ugly. Of course. Trying to charm yet another man in a white coat, probably hoping the doctor could be useful to her somehow.
His grandfather shuffled into the room a moment later, a gloomy old man who moved like every step cost him something.
“That woman destroyed everything I built,” the old man muttered, easing himself into his chair. He didn’t need to specify which woman. He never did.
Then he looked up, studying Caleb with sharp, tired eyes.
“When are you finally going to bring your wife to meet me?”
• • •
Caleb’s jaw tightened. The vein at his neck stood out clearly enough that his grandfather noticed.
He left without answering, the old man’s question hanging unresolved in the quiet room.
His grandfather sat with that silence for a long while after Caleb had gone, turning it over, until suspicion finally won out over patience.
“Find out who this woman is,” he told his own men that night. “Everything. I want to know everything.”
It took them the better part of a week.
They returned with two separate reports.
The old man read through the first without much reaction.
Then he opened the second, and the color drained slowly from his face as he read.