Chapter 6
Ryan staggered, nearly losing his balance.
When he looked up again, his eyes were bloodshot, as if they might bleed.
He stood frozen for a long moment before finally speaking, voice hoarse and unsteady.
“What do you mean she’s missing?”
“Where could Therese have gone?”
“And my mother-in-law-how could she possibly be dead?”
His assistant was on the verge of tears but forced himself to remain composed.
“The day you left with Miss Daisy, Miss Alba’s mother didn’t make it.”
“I checked the surveillance footage-she cried in the room for a long time before coming out. After arranging the funeral, she went up to the rooftop.”
“Every doctor who saw her said the same thing-she looked like she’d lost the will to live. Like a walking corpse.”
Ryan stood rooted to the spot, completely dazed.
He hadn’t forgotten.
Back then, when Therese’s mother fell into a coma, she had developed severe depression.
At her worst, she had attempted suicide multiple times.
Every time, he had been the one to pull her back from the brink, kneeling on the floor, begging her not to leave him.
He knew-the only thing keeping her alive was the hope of seeing her mother again.
And yet it was he who had snuffed out that final thread of hope.
The memory of yanking out her mother’s oxygen tube came crashing back like a thunderclap.
Color drained from Ryan’s face.
His lips trembled, but he couldn’t form a single word.
“And there’s something else,” the assistant said quietly. “The doctor mentioned that Miss Alba had undergone an abortion recently. Her body was extremely weak.”
That one sentence hit Ryan like a sledgehammer straight to the chest.
He began trembling so violently that he couldn’t even hold on to the baby in his arms.
The newborn slipped from his grasp, landing hard on the ground.
A sharp cry pierced the air-but Ryan didn’t even flinch.
Instead, he grabbed his assistant by the collar, panic overtaking his features.
“What did you say?” His voice cracked. “Therese… was pregnant?”
“That’s impossible! The doctor said her uterus was damaged. She couldn’t have children!” The assistant turned pale, but he replied slowly, clearly, and without hesitation. “Mr. Parker,
surely you knew how hard she tried to get pregnant.”
“I remember-she was always afraid of pain, but she endured countless hormone injections behind your back.”
“Every time you went on a business trip, she’d ask me to take her to the temple. She knelt at every step, praying for just one thing-to carry your child.”
Ryan’s mind went blank.
The echo of those words pounded in his skull.
She had done all that-endured pain, humbled herself, clung to faith-just for a chance to have his baby.
And what had he done?
He used every business trip as an excuse to be with Daisy.
In just three years, he’d gotten Daisy pregnant three times-behind Therese’s back.
Whenever guilt started to gnaw at him, he soothed his conscience with one lie: Therese couldn’t bear him a child. He just wanted an heir-what harm was there in that?
But now, he finally knew.
She could get pregnant.
And the child she carried… had been killed by his own hands.
How could he have done it?
How could he have crashed the car into her when she was already drowning in grief?
Agony and remorse swallowed him whole, consuming every corner of his soul.
Ryan collapsed onto the floor like a man who’d lost everything.
All light drained from his eyes.
“I… I didn’t know. Why didn’t she tell me she was pregnant?”
“If I had known, I never would have-”
His voice suddenly faltered.
The image of Therese’s deathly pale face, drained of all colors surged through his mind.
And at last, he understood.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to tell him.
It was that he’d never given her the chance.
When the city fell into chaos, the first person he thought of was Daisy.
He had risked his life, braving gunfire, just to find her.
But he forgot, there was someone else in this world who would have walked through bullets and blood just to find him.
