The Bitter Truth

Chapter 6

Caleb’s POV

The silence in the villa was no longer peaceful. It was abrasive.

For three years, I had returned to this house and found it bathed in a soft, welcoming warmth. The air had always smelled of vanilla and home, a scent I had taken for granted, like the air I breathed or the heart that beat in my chest.

Now, the air was stagnant, heavy with the scent of Seraphina’s expensive, cloying French perfume, a fragrance that felt like it was trying too hard to mask the rot underneath.

I sat in my study, the mahogany desk cluttered with files I couldn't bring myself to read. My reflection in the window looked like a stranger's. My eyes were bloodshot, the sharp lines of my jaw shadowed by a three-day stubble I hadn't bothered to shave.

I was obsessed.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her. Not the "Wallflower" Evelyn who used to wait for me with a gentle smile and a plate of food I usually ignored. No, I saw the new Evelyn.

The woman in the black silk suit who had looked at me with such icy indifference that I felt my blood turn to slush. I saw the way she stepped into that Rolls-Royce. I saw the way the world’s most powerful men bowed to her as if she were a queen returning to her throne.

Who was he? The man who owned those cars? The man who had given her the strength to look at me, Caleb Knight as if I were a smudge of dirt on her designer heels?

The thought of another man touching her, of another man hearing her laugh or seeing her in the quiet moments of the morning, felt like a serrated blade twisting in my gut.

It wasn't just jealousy. It was a primal, territorial rage that I had no right to feel, yet it consumed me.

A sharp knock at the door broke the silence.

"Enter," I rasped, my voice sounding like it had been dragged over gravel.

A man in a nondescript gray suit stepped in. This was Miller, the most expensive private investigator in the tri-state area.

He was a man who specialized in finding the secrets people buried in the deepest parts of the ocean. He looked pale. His hands were empty.

"Well?" I demanded, leaning forward. "Who is she with? Who is the man in the Phantom? Give me a name, Miller. Give me something I can break."

Miller didn't sit down. He stood by the door as if he were ready to bolt. "Mr. Knight... I’m returning your retainer. All of it."

I froze. "What are you talking about?"

"I can't take this case," Miller whispered, his voice trembling. "I tried. I followed the digital trail of the vehicle's registration. I tried to pull her social security records, her bank history, her childhood medical files. Anything to find a connection to the man you described."

"And?"

"And I hit a wall," Miller said, wiping sweat from his brow. "Not a digital wall. A 'Level Black' encryption. Mr. Knight, I’ve been in this business for twenty years. I’ve investigated senators, cartels, and tech giants. I have never seen a file like this. The moment I tried to bypass the first layer, my entire server farm was fried. Not hacked, fried. Physically melted."

He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Ten minutes later, I received a phone call. No caller ID. A voice told me that if I typed the name 'Evelyn' into a search bar one more time, my family’s dental records would be the only thing left to identify us. Whoever is protecting her... they don't just have money, Mr. Knight. They have the kind of power that makes the government look like a lemonade stand. She’s untouchable. And if you’re smart, you’ll stop looking."

Miller turned and practically ran out of the office.

I sat back, the silence of the room crashing down on me. Level Black.

The woman I had called nothing and cheapwas being shielded by an entity so powerful it could erase a man's life in ten minutes.

The realization hit me like a physical blow to the chest. I hadn't just lost a wife; I had discarded a mystery I never bothered to solve.

The sound of upbeat pop music suddenly blared from downstairs, vibrating through the floorboards. It was shrill, intrusive, and entirely wrong for this house.

I stood up, my temper snapping, and headed for the stairs.

The living room had been transformed into a circus of vanity. Dozens of gold and white balloons floated against the ceiling. Trays of expensive hors d'oeuvres sat on the silk-covered tables, tables Evelyn used to polish by hand.

A group of Seraphina’s fashion friends, people I despised for their shallowness were laughing and drinking my vintage champagne.

In the center of it all was Seraphina. She was wearing a dress that was far too short and far too bright, her laughter ringing out like breaking glass.

"Caleb, darling!" she squealed, spotting me on the stairs. She glided over, her movements calculated for the cameras her friends were holding.

"You're finally out of that dusty office! Look! It's our 'Victory Party.' Now that the incumbrance is finally gone, we can finally live! I’ve already contacted the architect to tear down that drab kitchen and put in a champagne bar."

Incumbrance.

The word burned in my ears.

"Stop the music," I said. My voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the room like a cold front.

The music died. The guests turned, their plastic smiles wavering.

"Caleb? What’s wrong?" Seraphina pouted, reaching for my arm.

"Get them out," I said, looking at her with a disgust I could no longer hide. "All of them. Now."

"But darling, it's a celebration…"

"I said OUT!" I roared.

The guests scrambled, grabbing their coats and scurrying for the door like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Seraphina stood in the middle of her ruined party, her face flushing with a mixture of embarrassment and fury.

"How dare you humiliate me like that!" she hissed once the door slammed shut. "I am trying to help you move on! That woman was a weight around your neck, Caleb! She was boring, she was plain, and she was dragging your image down!"

"She was my wife for three years, Seraphina," I said, walking toward her, my shadow looming over her. "And in three days without her, I’ve realized I don't know who the hell you are or why you're in my house."

"Your house?" she laughed shrilly. "This is our house now! I’m going to erase every trace of her from these walls. I’ve already started."

She pointed toward the kitchen. "I had the cleaners go through everything. All her little trinkets and her pathetic anniversary nonsense. It’s all where it belongs. In the trash."

My heart gave a strange, painful thud. I walked past her, my feet heavy, toward the kitchen.

The room was pristine. The smell of the rosemary lamb was gone, replaced by the sterile scent of bleach. But in the corner, the large stainless steel trash can was full.

I didn't know what I was looking for. Maybe I wanted to see the ruins of the dinner I had stepped on. Maybe I wanted to feel the guilt until it choked me. I reached down and pushed aside some discarded party decorations, gold streamers and broken crackers.

And then I saw it.

A small, crumpled strip of thermal paper. It was tucked between a piece of discarded lamb and a wet napkin.

I picked it up. My fingers were shaking so violently I almost dropped it. I smoothed the paper out against the marble countertop, the same countertop where Evelyn used to knead bread while she waited for me to come home.

It was a sonogram.

A tiny, cloudy image of a life. A white dot in a sea of black.

The date on the top was from two days ago. The patient name: Evelyn Knight

The world tilted. The air left the room. I felt as if the floor had turned into water and I was sinking into a dark, bottomless ocean.

She was pregnant.

The night I brought Seraphina home, the night I threw the divorce papers in her face, the night I told her she was a "placeholder", she was carrying a child.

She was going to tell me. She had made that dinner, she had dressed up, she had waited and I had crushed her. I had handed her a death warrant for our marriage while she was holding the beginning of our family.

I collapsed onto a kitchen stool, the paper clutched in my hand as if it were the only thing keeping me alive. A sob, raw and ugly, rose in my throat but got stuck. I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest by a dull blade.

"What is that?"

Seraphina was standing in the doorway, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the paper. She walked over and snatched it from my hand before I could react.

She looked at it for a second, her face turning a sickly shade of white.

Then, her expression shifted. The panic in her eyes was replaced by a cold, calculating mask.

"Oh, this?" she said, her voice dripping with a fake, high-pitched sympathy. She let out a short, mocking laugh. "Caleb, honey... you don't actually think this is yours, do you?"

I looked up at her, my vision blurred. "What?"

"Oh, please," Seraphina said, tossing the sonogram back onto the counter as if it were trash. "Evelyn was quiet, sure, but she wasn't a saint. Didn't you wonder why she was always visiting her non-existent family or going on those retreats for weeks at a time? She was seeing someone, Caleb. An old boyfriend from her college days."

"You’re lying," I whispered, but the seed of doubt she was planting was a poisonous one.

"Am I?" Seraphina stepped closer, her voice a soothing venom.

"Think about it. She signs the papers and suddenly she’s in a fleet of Rolls-Royces? She has Level Black protection? A woman like her doesn't get that on her own. She was cheating on you for years, Caleb. She probably wanted the divorce so she could finally be with her 'real' man. This baby? This was her exit plan.She was going to pin it on you for the alimony, but then she realized her new lover was richer."

I looked at the sonogram. The tiny white dot. My mind was a storm of conflicting images. I remembered Evelyn's devotion, her soft smiles, her endless patience. But then I saw the Empress in the black car. I saw the power she wielded.

Was it possible?

Was I really just a placeholder for her, too?

"She’s a liar, Caleb," Seraphina whispered, putting her hands on my shoulders. "She played the victim so well that you’re actually feeling guilty. Don't let her win. She’s gone. Her and her bastard are someone else's problem now."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I looked at the trash can, then at the sonogram, and then at the dark window.

Somewhere out there, Evelyn was in the arms of a man who could melt servers and command fleets. And whether that child was mine or not, the truth was a jagged pill that stayed lodged in my throat.

I picked up the sonogram, folded it carefully, and put it in my pocket.

"Get out, Seraphina," I said, my voice dead.

"Caleb…"

"I said get out. I want to be alone in my drab, boring house."

As she left, muttering curses under her breath, I stood in the dark kitchen. The "Victory Party" was over. And as I looked at my reflection in the darkened glass of the oven, I realized for the first time that I hadn't won anything.

I was a king in a kingdom of garbage, holding a picture of a child I would never know if it was mine, haunted by a woman I never truly knew at all.