2026-01-05 16:59:25The grandfather froze, his face draining of color. He stared at Lila like he'd never seen her before. When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous.
"What did you just say?"
Lila lifted her chin. "I said I will never marry him."
"You ungrateful child." The old man's voice rose. "Do you have any idea what you're saying? Being able to marry Young Master Walker is a blessing for our entire family. Master Donovan's disciple—do you understand what that means? And you stand here throwing it away like garbage?"
"I don't care who—"
"Enough!" The grandfather's shout echoed across the courtyard. "You will go inside. You will inform your parents. And you will show some respect. Now."
Lila's hands clenched into fists. For a moment, it looked like she might argue. Then she turned and stormed toward the house.
The grandfather watched her go, his jaw tight. Then he turned to Kai, forcing his expression into something apologetic.
"Young Master Walker, I—"
"It's fine." Kai's smile was strained. "Really."
It wasn't fine. Nothing about this was fine.
He'd come here to break off an engagement. Instead, he was standing in the courtyard of a woman who hated him, being welcomed as her future husband. The woman he'd slept with. The woman who'd threatened to destroy him.
The irony was so thick he could choke on it.
The grandfather studied Kai's face. His own expression shifted from apologetic to worried.
"Young Master Walker, if you... if you find my granddaughter unsuitable, I understand. I have other grandchildren. A younger granddaughter, perhaps, or—"
"No." The word came out before Kai could think. "The engagement stands. Lila is fine."
Why had he said that? He should be agreeing. Taking the out. Walking away.
But something in the old man's desperate expression stopped him. And beneath that, a strange sense of responsibility. He'd taken Lila's innocence, even if it was to save her life. Walking away now felt wrong.
The grandfather's relief was visible. “Thank you. Master Donovan once saved my life years ago. I've never forgotten that debt. When he approached me about this marriage, I saw it as fate—a chance to finally repay him. And now, meeting you myself, I see he chose well.” His expression grew earnest. “I'm getting old, Young Master Walker. One day, I'd like to entrust our family business to someone capable. Someone I can trust.”
"Grandfather!"
Lila's voice cut through the air. She emerged from the house, flanked by a middle-aged couple and an elderly woman with sharp eyes and an even sharper expression.
The elderly woman swept forward, her silk robes rustling. She didn't bow. She didn't smile.
"So you're the one," she said, looking Kai up and down with clear disdain.
The grandfather stepped forward. "Eleanor, this is—"
"I know who he is." The grandmother's voice was cold. "And I'm telling you now, no one is marrying my granddaughter off to some ordinary man."
"Eleanor—"
“Lila is destined to marry Daniel Cross!” The grandmother’s voice rang out.
The grandfather’s jaw tightened. “Eleanor—”
“The Cross family is one level above us in status,” she continued, stepping forward. “Do you not understand what that means for our position?”
“I understand perfectly well—”
“Then why are you throwing away this opportunity?” Her voice climbed higher. “Daniel’s father is close to Vincent Shaw himself. Vincent Shaw! Do you know how many families would kill for that connection?”
Lila’s mother moved closer, emboldened by the grandmother’s words. “Once Lila marries into that family, we’ll have access to—”
“Cooperation,” the grandmother finished. “Real connections. Opportunities we could never reach on our own.” She gestured dismissively at Kai. “Our family will rise. A bright future is right in front of us, and you want to throw it away for this… this nobody?”
“He is not a nobody,” the grandfather said through gritted teeth.
“Look at him!” The grandmother’s hand swept toward Kai. “Look at his clothes, his bearing. What could he possibly offer us that the Cross family cannot?”
Lila's parents stepped forward, their expressions nervous but determined.
"Father, please reconsider," Lila's father said. "The family's future depends on Lila's marriage. How can we be so casual about it?"
"Think of the opportunities," her mother added. "The Cross family could elevate us. Isn't that what we've always wanted?"
The grandfather's face went purple.
"SHUT UP!"
The courtyard went silent.
"I didn't want to say this in front of Young Master Walker," the grandfather said, his voice shaking with rage. "I didn't want to make us look like calculating opportunists. But your stupidity has forced my hand."
He pointed at Kai. "This man—THIS man right here, is the one who can take our family to the next level. Master Donovan's disciple. Do you understand what that means? The perfect son-in-law is standing in front of you, and you want to chase after a middleman like Daniel Cross? Utterly foolish!"
Lila's parents fell silent, exchanging uneasy glances.
But Lila stepped forward, her voice trembling. "Grandfather, you're being deceived. He's not who you think he is. He's just an ordinary man. I know him. He's—"
"Lila, be quiet—"
"He's lying to you!" Her voice rose. "Or you're lying to yourself. He can't possibly—"
The grandmother cut in, her voice sharp. "The boy is right in front of you, and you still believe this nonsense? Have you gone blind with age? How could this... this poor nobody lead our family anywhere? He's not even worthy of carrying Daniel's shoes—"
The slap echoed across the courtyard.
The grandmother stumbled, her hand flying to her cheek. She stared at her husband in shock.
The grandfather's hand was still raised, shaking with fury. When he spoke, his voice was deadly quiet.
"As long as I am the head of this family, anyone who opposes me again will be expelled on the spot." He turned to the grandmother, his eyes cold. "And you, Eleanor. Don't embarrass yourself by forcing a divorce at your age. The choice is yours."
No one spoke. No one moved.
The grandfather let the silence stretch, then turned to Kai. His expression shifted back to apologetic.
"Young Master Walker, I deeply apologize. Our family has no discipline. We've made a spectacle of ourselves in front of you." He bowed deeply. "But I assure you, we will welcome you with the utmost sincerity from this moment forward."
He straightened, his eyes bright with determination. "In fact, to show our commitment, I propose we settle this matter today. You and Lila can go to the registry office and register your marriage. Make it official. No more delays, no more objections."
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Latest Chapter
Chapter 278
Marcus was nine now, tall enough to reach the low branch of the tree outside the kitchen window without being lifted, something Kai still hadn’t quite adjusted to, the sight of his son reaching for a branch that used to require a boost. They were raking the same leaves that fell every year from the same tree, a job neither of them particularly loved and both of them did anyway, every October, without much discussion about whether it needed doing.Lila had gone inside twenty minutes earlier to start dinner, leaving them to it the way she usually did, and the yard had settled into the particular quiet of two people working side by side without needing to fill every minute with talk. Kai liked that about raking with him now. Marcus had stopped needing constant conversation to feel comfortable in the silence, had grown into the kind of quiet that didn’t need managing.“Dad,” Marcus said, not looking up from his own pile, rake dragging steady across the grass. “What was the proposal.”“Wha
Chapter 277
Constance had told him, on the bench outside the hospital, that there would be something coming to him eventually, not soon, not on any schedule she’d name, and that he should let it come in its own time instead of asking her about it again. He’d agreed to that, mostly because arguing with her about timing had never once worked in his favor. He hadn’t meant to count the weeks. For the first month he genuinely didn’t, busy enough with Priya’s rollout and the last of the season’s harvest that the promise sat quietly in the back of his mind without demanding attention.By week seven he’d started counting without quite admitting to himself that he was doing it.The package arrived on a Tuesday, plain padded envelope, no return address, his name in handwriting he recognized instantly even though he’d only seen it a handful of times, on margin notes in old documents, on the single page she’d signed for him once before. Eleven weeks exactly, though he only did the math after he’d already ope
Chapter 276
Constance announced her retirement in an email three sentences long, sent to a distribution list of exactly four people, no subject line flourish, no preamble, just the fact of it stated as plainly as she stated everything else that mattered.Kai read it twice at his desk before he fully absorbed what it actually said, and immediately began, in his head, planning something larger, a proper send off, the board room, catered food, a chance for the whole Institute to say what her thirty years had actually meant to the place. He called her within the hour to start arranging it.She cut him off before he’d gotten more than two sentences into the idea.“No.”“You haven’t even heard what I’m proposing.”“I don’t need to hear it. I already know the shape of it, and the answer is no.” Her voice carried none of the frailty of the hospital months earlier, sharp and entirely certain, the version of her he’d first met eighteen months ago. “I want a Tuesday afternoon in Archives. Coffee. Nothing el
Chapter 275
A year and a half in, Dahl still ran his corner of the Materials Lab exactly the way he’d run it from the beginning, technically compliant, spiritually untouched. Kai stopped by that October mostly out of habit, not expecting anything to have shifted, and found what he always found, review documentation filled out completely, correctly, on time, with all the warmth of a man filing paperwork he considered beneath him.“Everything’s in order,” Dahl said, not looking up from his bench.“I can see that.”“Then I assume you’re not here to lecture me.”“I’m not here to lecture you,” Kai said. “I stopped doing that about a year ago. I noticed it wasn’t working.”Dahl glanced up at that, something almost like amusement crossing his face before it disappeared again. “Took you long enough.”“You do the review. You do it correctly. You’ve never once missed a deadline or fudged a number.”“So what’s the complaint.”“There isn’t one,” Kai said, and meant it more than he expected to when he said it
Chapter 274
The flight out was quiet, Priya running through note cards she’d clearly written and rewritten a dozen times, Kai reading in the seat beside her and doing his best not to look like he was watching her do it.“You don’t have to sit in the back,” she said, somewhere over Ohio, not looking up from the cards. “You could sit up front. It would probably look more supportive.”“I’m not here to look supportive,” Kai said. “I’m here to be the person you can’t quite forget is in the room and also can’t lean on. Those are different jobs. The back does both better than the front.”“That’s a strange kind of support.”“It’s the only kind that’s actually useful today.”The room, when they got there, was smaller than the consortium’s glass conference room, a department library at one of the five institutions, maybe twenty people arranged around a long table with the slightly skeptical posture of people who’d been told about a framework and hadn’t yet decided whether to believe in it. Kai took a seat
Chapter 273
Lila had the folding tables set up before Kai had even finished his coffee, dragging them out from the garage while the morning was still cool enough to make the work easy.“You could’ve waited for me,” Kai said, coming out to grab the other end of the second table.“You were slow,” she said. “The tomatoes weren’t going to wait for you either.”Marcus was already at the end of the driveway when they got the tables positioned, arranging baskets in rows with the same seriousness he brought to everything in the garden these days. He’d grown a full head since the frost, since the row he’d insisted on choosing himself the winter before, and something about the way he stood now, steady, sure of his own hands, made Kai stop for a second just to watch him work.“What’s the sign say,” Kai asked, though he could already read it from where he stood.“FREE, TAKE WHAT YOU NEED,” Marcus said, holding it up like he expected an argument.“Lila mentioned you two had a discussion about a donation jar.”
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