Part 3The Secret Son at Our Door

After Leo left, Robert and I sat in the living room in heavy silence.

The situation was what it was. Words felt feeble and pointless.

After weighing my options, I swallowed the rage that was threatening to choke me and asked Robert, “What’s your plan?”

He hemmed and hawed for a long time. “Julia, look, we’re both getting on in years. We’re not as healthy as we used to be. Having someone around to look after us would be…”

“Don’t give me that,” I cut him off. “I will not accept him.”

He was his son, not mine. Let him look after us? Was I in a hurry to die? I wasn’t blind. I could see the open hostility in Leo’s eyes whenever he looked at me.

It’s not that I hadn’t considered divorce. But divorce meant splitting our marital assets down the middle. Everything we had, we’d earned together over a lifetime of work. I couldn’t stomach the thought of even half of it going to someone like Leo.

Robert’s expression shifted, but he managed to suppress his temper. He went on and on, the gist of it being that what’s done is done, Leo was his blood, and he couldn’t just abandon his own son.

It wasn't like he was royalty with a throne to pass down. All this talk of his “only bloodline” was nonsense.

Seeing my unwavering coldness, Robert finally gritted his teeth and played his trump card. “Julia, if you have a child out there, you can bring them home, too. They can share the inheritance with Leo.”

He dared to say this because we’d spent thirty years together, never apart for more than a few months. He was certain I had no way of having a secret child. I was fifty-seven, well past childbearing age. Their plan was perfectly timed. They’d waited until now to show up, probably fearing I might have changed my mind about being childfree earlier and had a child of my own.

But who can really say when it comes to secret children?

Noticing my grim expression, Robert softened his tone. “Julia, I admit I made a small mistake when I was young, and I’m sorry. But we’ve been through thirty years of storms together. How many years do we even have left? It’s not like we can raise a child at our age. And Leo… he has half my blood. He can’t be a bad person…”

He probably didn’t even realize the smug, triumphant look on his own face. He was the one who had wanted to be childfree, claiming he disliked children, that he had a physical aversion to them. I didn’t care for children either, so we’d reached a consensus.

Now, he had stabbed me in the back and was laughing at me for being a fool who didn’t know how to protect herself.