Chapter 3Sterilized After Your Betrayal

I felt as if I’d been struck by lightning.

The child I had mourned for five years—the son I had wept for in a cemetery for three days straight—wasn't dead. She had given him away. She had handed my flesh and blood to Bennett like a consolation prize.

The next evening, Claire’s security detail literally forced me into a suit and drove me to the gala.

Bennett was there, looking every bit the master of the house, one hand on Jamie’s shoulder, the other resting possessively on Claire’s waist. I stood on the periphery, a ghost at my own funeral.

I heard the whispers behind me.

“I heard Nigel can’t have children. That’s why she keeps Bennett around—to secure the Steward heir.”

“Bennett’s the real power there. Nigel’s just the trophy.”

Claire looked at me, a small, triumphant smirk on her lips. She thought I’d finally folded. She thought I was there to play my part.

I didn't. I walked straight up to them, my voice trembling with a decade’s worth of suppressed rage. “You stole my son. You told me he was dead and gave him to him.”

Claire’s eyes went wide for a fraction of a second before they turned into icy daggers. “We’ll discuss this at home. Do not make a scene.”

The last flicker of hope I had for her died in that moment. The video was real. The betrayal was total.

Bennett pulled Jamie closer, shrinking back with a look of practiced terror. “Nigel, please. Don’t hurt us again. I never told her about what you did… just leave us alone.”

He shifted his sleeve, intentionally revealing bruises on his and Jamie’s arms. The guests gasped.

“He’s bitter because he’s sterile?” someone hissed.

“To hit a child…” another whispered.

“Nigel, you monster!” Claire’s voice boomed over the crowd.

“He’s my son!” I screamed. “I would never—”

“That mean man hit me!” Jamie cried out, his voice shrill and rehearsed. “He told me to stay away from my real Daddy! I saw him hit Papa too!”

The room spun. My own son was looking at me with eyes full of lies, coached by a sociopath. Claire’s face was a mask of pure loathing.

“I had no idea you were this sick, Nigel. To take your jealousy out on a child?”

I reached for Jamie, a desperate, primal instinct to connect with my son. “Luke—Jamie—I’m your father—”

Bennett gave the boy a subtle, violent shove. Jamie tumbled backward, crashing into a towering pyramid of champagne flutes. Glass shattered. Blood bloomed on the boy’s white shirt.

“Nigel, no!” Bennett shrieked. “He’s just a baby!”