All Chapters of This Life, My Son and I Chose Grace: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

I had returned to the night my wife brought Stefan Pryce and his son through the door.The boy hid behind Colette Harmon, tugging at the hem of her shirt. "The school's doing a parents' day, and I need a mom. Dad says I'm just a kid with no mom."I got up without a word and went to the closet to pack a suitcase. "Have the driver take you. I already put outfits together."On our wedding anniversary, Emmett Pryce spiked a sudden fever. Colette rushed out in the middle of dinner while our son was holding up his cake, ready to blow out the candles.I steadied his trembling hands. "Your mom had to go. I'll make a wish with you."The guests praised my generosity and called me a model husband. No one saw the bruises on my son's palms from pressing them against the table. After the party cleared out, I crouched down to straighten Felix Cavell's crooked bow tie. He tilted his face up, calm in a way no child his age should have been. "Dad, Mom can't be with us again today, can she?"I lo

The next few days passed without incident.Colette came home every evening. She even brought Felix a gift, which was a first. It was a remote-controlled car. She ruffled his hair. "I've been busy with work. You understand, right?"Felix nodded like the good boy he was, then turned around and stuffed the car into the storage bin the moment she left the room.He whispered to me, "Dad, that car is the one Emmett got bored of. I've seen it before."I rubbed his head and said nothing.On Friday afternoon, I went to pick Felix up from kindergarten and noticed his teacher watching me with a strange look on her face.Emmett was in the middle of a crowd of kids, yelling at the top of his lungs, "My uncle is so mean! Colette said she's gonna find my cousin a new dad and get rid of my uncle!"Felix stood in the corner, his face flushed scarlet and fists clenched at his sides. He charged forward. "That's not true! My dad didn't do anything!"Emmett shoved him. "You're just a kid nobody's m

I leaned against the wall, my phone still showing the number I had not yet dialed.It belonged to Sloane Cortland, a woman I had saved in my previous life on a winding mountain road. Her car had crashed and caught fire, with smoke pouring from the wreck. I had nearly killed myself dragging her out.When she came to, she took my hand and told me she owed me her life. If I ever needed anything, all I had to do was call.In my last life, I never dialed that number, not even as I died. This time, I had to do it for Felix.Just as my thumb hit the call button, steady footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor."You don't need to call." A woman's voice carried down the hall, clear and composed. "I'm already here."I looked up.Sloane walked toward me in a dark overcoat, more than a dozen suited bodyguards fanning out behind her. She looked more formidable than I remembered, older and sharper. She had the kind of presence that rearranged the air around her.Patients and staff clear

Felix woke up two days later. The first thing he did when he opened his eyes was search for me. "Dad...""I'm here." I took his hand."Where's Mom?""She's busy. She has some important things she needs to take care of."Colette was, in fact, busy.Sloane moved fast. Stefan's forged medical records were exposed, and the hospital filed charges against him. He panicked and stormed into Colette's company, screaming that she had promised to protect him.That was when Colette realized she had been played from the very beginning.What broke her was worse than that. Emmett was not her nephew at all.A paternity test revealed that Emmett's biological mother was an old flame of Stefan's, a woman with a criminal record. The child Colette's sister had actually given Stefan died before it ever left the delivery room.Even her sister's so-called accidental death had been no accident. She had uncovered the truth, and Stefan had pushed her down a flight of stairs.The doctor held Emmett's ev

Prison was not kind to Stefan.He had made an enemy of Sloane Cortland, and that came with consequences. Word was that he was assigned the hardest labor every day, never given enough to eat, and kept getting hurt in ways that were always ruled accidental.What broke him was Emmett. The boy had been placed in a specialized institution. As a child with XYY syndrome, he quickly became their most difficult case.He attacked a teacher. He bit another child. Eventually, he was put in isolation.When Stefan saw him on visiting day, the boy stared back with the flat, savage eyes of a caged animal. "Dad, when I get out, I'm going to kill that man."The blood drained from Stefan's face. It hit him then that what he had raised was not a son. It was something else entirely.He went on a hunger strike and demanded to see Colette, so she went. Through the glass partition, Stefan wept openly. "Colette, I was wrong. Please, help me."Colette looked at him without a trace of warmth. "Help you? I