Chapter 10: The Ultimatum

DON CHRISTOPHER 𓆩♡𓆪

I sent for Alex the following morning.

He came in the way he always came into rooms, controlled, certain, carrying himself with the particular composure of a man who has decided in advance that whatever is about to happen will not affect him. 

I had been watching him do this since he was fourteen years old. I knew exactly what it cost him to maintain and exactly what it covered.

I gestured to the chair across from my desk.

He sat.

I folded my hands and looked at my grandson, this sharp, brilliant, emotionally defended man I had raised and shaped and sometimes wondered about and let the silence sit for a moment before I spoke.

“The results,” I said. “You’ve seen them.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

He looked at me.

 “And they confirm what she said.”

“Then you know what comes next,” I said. “You take responsibility. Fully. For her and for the children.”

Something moved through his face.

“Grandfather,” he said carefully, “there are other ways to handle this. We can provide for her financially,  set up an account, arrange housing, ensure the children are taken care of without…”

“Pay her off,” I said flatly.

He said nothing.

“You want to pay her off,” I repeated. “A girl who came to your gate alone with nothing, carrying your children, and told you the truth when lying would have been considerably easier and your solution is to write a check and close the door.”

“I am not ready to be a father,” he said. “And I am certainly not ready to be anyone’s husband.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

“No one asked if you were ready, Alex,” I said. “Ready is not a prerequisite for responsibility. You made a choice three weeks ago, in that hotel room, as part of a wager you accepted from me without a single moment of hesitation. The consequences of that choice are now sleeping in your guest room.”

His jaw tightened.

“You will take full responsibility,” I said. “For the girl and for those children. You will do right by them in every sense of that phrase.” I paused. “Or you will surrender your claim to everything,  the company, the assets, the inheritance, all of it. Every single thing I built and intended to leave to you.”

The room went very quiet.

He stared at me.

I remembered the last time I had seen that expression on a face in this room, his father, thirty-one years ago, when I told him I expected him to honor his commitment to the woman he had promised himself to. He had looked at me the same way. Like the ground had moved without warning.

“Grandfather,” Alex said slowly. “What did you just say?”

“Exactly what you heard,” I said. “Do the right thing, Alex. It is not complicated. It is simply difficult. Those are not the same thing.”

He said nothing.

I stood up slowly, deliberately, with the unhurried certainty of a man who has made his position clear and has no intention of elaborating further.

“Take the time you need to think,” I said. “But don’t take long. That girl has already waited long enough for someone in this family to behave with some decency.”

I left him in the chair.

And walked back down the corridor toward the east wing, passing the guest room on the way, noting the thin line of light beneath the door that told me she was still awake.

Good.

She was going to need to be.