The Loser Programmer Husband is a Quadrillionaire

Chapter 3

The front door slammed shut behind them, and the sound echoed through the empty house like a gunshot. Clara spun around to face Ethan, her arms crossed tight over her chest, her eyes blazing with a fury that matched his own.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Her voice cracked through the silence. "Kicking a business partner in front of half the restaurant? Do you have any idea what that's going to cost me tomorrow?"

Ethan stood by the door, his coat still half on, his face carved from stone. "I'm not the one who should be explaining myself right now."

"Excuse me?"

"You betrayed me, Clara." His voice was flat and cold, no heat left in it at all, just something hollow underneath. "That's what's happening right now."

Clara's mouth fell open, and for a second she looked like she couldn't decide whether to laugh or scream. "Betrayed you? I went to a business dinner. That is not betrayal, Ethan, that is my job."

"Then explain the message." Ethan pulled out his phone and held the screen toward her, his hand steady even though his chest was anything but. "John sent you sorry last night at 11:47. Sorry for what, Clara? You never even replied. What exactly was he apologizing for?"

Clara's face went still. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out for a long moment. Her eyes dropped to the floor and stayed there.

"That's what I thought," Ethan said quietly.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone again, this time swiping through the photos he had taken outside the hotel. He held them up one by one. John's hand on her back. Their heads close together laughing. John pouring her wine like they had done it a hundred times before.

"Look at these," Ethan said, his voice shaking now despite himself. "Tell me he's not chasing you. Tell me you can't see what's right in front of your face."

Clara's eyes filled, but her chin lifted in defiance. "John invested forty million dollars into my company last quarter. Without him, our numbers this year look like garbage in front of the board. I was doing my job, Ethan. That's all this was."

"Your job." Ethan let out a short, humorless laugh. "Does your job usually come with candles and red wine?"

"I don't control what restaurant he picks!"

"No, but you show up. Every single time." Ethan's jaw tightened. "I used to trust you without asking a single question. I would have believed anything you told me before today." He paused, his eyes going distant and hard. "Not anymore."

Something in his tone made Clara go quiet. She watched him reach into his coat pocket, and when his hand came back out, he was holding a folded piece of paper. He threw it onto the coffee table between them without a word.

Clara looked down at it, confused, then bent to pick it up. Her eyes scanned the page, and her face slowly drained of color.

"She's not mine," Ethan said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Our daughter. Biologically, she was never mine."

Clara's head snapped up. For a second she just stared at him, and then, unbelievably, a short laugh broke out of her, sharp and disbelieving. "Okay. Fine. We're fighting, I get it. But this?" She shook the paper at him. "This is a low blow, Ethan. Even for you."

"I'm not joking."

"You expect me to believe you had our daughter's blood tested behind my back?" Clara's voice rose, cracking at the edges. "That you would accuse me of something like this just because you're jealous of a man I work with?"

"I want a divorce." Ethan's voice didn't waver. Didn't even rise. He said it the way a man reads out a grocery list, and that was somehow worse than if he had screamed it.

Clara froze completely, the paper trembling in her hand.

For a moment neither of them said anything. The clock on the wall ticked in the silence, each second stretching longer than the last.

Then Clara's shoulders dropped, and her voice came out soft, almost gentle, which made Ethan's skin crawl more than her anger ever could.

"Being too friendly with John, that part is on me. I admit that." She set the paper down carefully on the table, smoothing it flat with two fingers. "But you already put him on the floor tonight in front of the entire restaurant. I'd say that settles the score."

"Settles the score." Ethan repeated the words like they were something foreign in his mouth.

"I'll cut off contact with him outside of business meetings. I promise you that." Clara stepped closer, her eyes searching his face for something, anything, that looked like the man she married. "But I'm not going to throw away a partner who brings this much value to my company just because you can't stand sharing a dinner table with him."

Ethan stared at her, and for the first time that night he felt something close to disbelief crawl up his spine. "Did you hear a single word I just said? I told you she isn't mine, and you're standing here negotiating business terms with me."

"Because I know she is yours." Clara's voice cracked slightly, but her eyes never left his. "I don't know what test you think you ran or who gave you that piece of paper, but it's wrong. It has to be wrong."

Ethan searched her face for any flicker of guilt, any twitch that would tell him she was lying. But all he found was a strange, unshaken certainty that made his stomach drop.

What if the hospital made a mistake?

The thought crept in before he could stop it, quiet and insidious, curling around the edges of his anger. Clara had never once flinched when he mentioned the blood type. She hadn't panicked, hadn't stumbled over her words, hadn't done anything a guilty woman would do. She simply stood there, calm and certain, like a woman who knew the truth and was tired of defending it.

Ethan's fists slowly loosened at his sides. The rage was still there, burning somewhere deep in his chest, but underneath it now sat something colder and far more unsettling.

Doubt.

He looked at Clara standing in the soft light of their living room, her eyes red but dry, her spine straight despite everything he had thrown at her tonight, and for the first time since he had walked out of that hospital, Ethan Morrison was no longer sure of anything at all.