Chapter 442/I Am the One Who Killed Our Son!!
Chapter 448
Julie’s POV
My jaw locked, my eyes frozen on Robert’s towering, ruthless features as my body shrank under the suffocating weight of his shadow. I was gasping in sheer terror a terror that paralyzed my limbs. I searched frantically for any hole in the earth to swallow me whole before my chest burst under the weight of this dark secret.
Then, out of nowhere, Steve’s voice shattered the dead silence. It was soft, yet unyielding, severing every false lifeline I had spent so long weaving:
"Enough, Julie!... Tell him the truth."
My pupils trembled violently. I snapped my head toward my brother in absolute panic, begging him with broken, pleading eyes to shut up begging him not to open the gates of hell over both our heads!
But Steve didn’t look back at me. Instead, he took a firm, deliberate step toward the raging mountain before him, locking his eyes directly with Robert’s icy glare.
A eerie silence settled for a single second a second where the breath hitched completely in my throat before Steve dropped the bomb that shattered the universe:
"Ethan... is your son."
Time stopped completely in the room.
Color was drained from the world. A scalding cold rushed through my veins, as if my heart had ceased beating altogether. Robert’s pitch-black eyes lowered with agonizing slowness toward my brother, his pupils widening in profound shock that paralyzed every muscle in his towering body.
A silence fell over the room heavier than the mountains of hell, a silence that slowly tore through flesh and bone.
Every single muscle in Robert’s frame hardened into stone. His hot breath caught trapped in his chest with terrifying stillness. His dark emerald eyes widened in a devastating shock I had never seen before in my life, as if the words leaving my brother’s mouth were jagged shards of steel driving straight into his heart.
I stumbled back, collapsing onto my knees in total ruin, digging my shaking palms into my shattered chest. Scalding tears gushed down my face, burning a painful path over my cheeks between heavy, choking gasps.
His icy glare lowered toward me with a slowness that paralyzed my limbs. This time, his gaze wasn’t sharp or laced with suspicion. It overflowed with a destructive, hollow bewilderment as if the storm had suddenly cleared only to make way for absolute devastation.
He spoke in a stunned, low, raspy voice:
"What the fuck do you mean... Ethan is our son?"
I couldn’t answer. A heavy lump strangled my throat, making it impossible to utter a single word.
He dropped to his knees in front of me with terrifying speed, grabbing my shoulders and digging his fingers in with a force that shook my entire frame:
"What does this mean, Julie?! Speak!"
I lifted my tear-soaked gaze to meet his, my voice breaking in fragile, trembling gasps from my shattered throat:
"When I ran away from the club... I found out I was pregnant."
His hands froze over my shoulders. He swallowed hard with desperate difficulty, staring down at me in paralyzed shock:
"Pregnant?!"
Our eyes locked, my heart tearing to shreds inside my chest, and I choked out in total heartbreak:
"At first... I wanted to get rid of him because I hated you! I was in so much pain because of you... because I thought you were going to sell me!"
His entire face hardened, locking onto me in a terrifying, dead silence, as if silently demanding I complete this tragedy.
I continued through broken sobs:
"I went to the hospital to get an abortion... but I couldn’t! I heard his tiny heartbeat... He was inside me, Robert! He was beating inside me!"
His steel features remained completely rigid like a jagged rock devoid of any visible reaction, as if he had turned into a hollow statue.
I clenched the fabric of his shirt with trembling fingers, adding in shattering despair:
"I loved him before he was even born... I loved him even though he was yours! And the day I gave birth to him... he was born dead!"
Gathering every last drop of strength left in my body, I grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket, pulling him down toward me as I screamed directly into his face:
"My son was born dead because he didn’t want a mother like me!"
Steve’s face contorted in the background. He took a broken step toward us, whispering in desperation:
"Julie... please, don’t talk like that!"
I ignored the entire world, keeping my eyes glued to Robert’s face, which had turned the color of ash looking like a cold, lifeless corpse. I screamed, shaking him madly:
"I killed our son! I’m the one who wanted to kill him while he was in my womb, and that’s why he died and left me to suffer alone!"
I slammed my shaking palms against his solid chest, whispering in a soul-crushing agony:
"Kill me!... Go on, pull your gun and kill me, Robert!"
Suddenly... his steel arms wrapped around my back with a force that almost crushed my ribs, pulling me violently against his chest.
My tears poured freely, soaking the fabric of his suit jacket. His heavy fingers moved with a strange, gentle rhythm through my hair, his raspy voice whispering against my ear, dripping with rare helplessness:
"Don’t blame yourself, Julie... None of this is your fault."
I buried my face in the crook of his chest, letting out continuous, gut-wrenching sobs as I repeated in utter despair:
"It’s my fault, Robert... It’s my fault—"
He cut me off instantly with a warm, low murmur from the depths of his chest:
"Shhh..."
He released me with agonizing slowness, rising to his full, towering height. Without uttering another word, he turned around, walked with heavy, echoing steps toward the door, and closed it behind him.
Steve immediately rushed over, dropping to his knees beside me to calm me down. He wrapped his arms around my trembling shoulders with painful tenderness, his voice wavering with tears:
"Enough, Julie... please. You’re tearing my heart out every time you do this to yourself!"
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Robert’s POV
I closed the door of the house behind me with a crushing heaviness, as if locking the gates of a dark prison where I had been trapped for four years without ever knowing it.
I walked with heavy, mechanical steps toward my car parked under the scorching sun. The wind blew dry and hot, yet it wasn’t enough to cool the burning fire raging inside my chest.
I stopped, leaning both palms against the roof of the car, dropping my head low as I tried to process the shattered pieces of the tragedy that had just been dragged out from the depths of Julie’s throat.
My son...
I had a son beating inside her womb. He came into this world and died far away, without me ever knowing he existed without me ever holding his tiny body in my arms, or protecting him from this cursed fate.
My grip tightened around the metal of the car roof with enough force to bend it. A terrifying rage boiled through my veins... not at her, but at myself. At every single moment I had left her to battle the dark alone, thinking I was nothing more than a cheap monster with a heart incapable of anything but violence.
I remembered her shattered sobs, her broken gaze when she hit my chest and begged me to kill her... I remembered her tears burning through my jacket. How could a girl that gentle carry a burden of this magnitude, flaying her own soul for years over a guilt that was never hers?!
With trembling fingers fingers that had never trembled before the fiercest of my enemies I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. I lit one up, inhaling the harsh tobacco, letting it tear through my lungs with a heat far more merciful than the fire burning beneath my ribs.
I took a deep drag from the cigarette, but the air which usually filled my lungs with ease suddenly felt heavy, thick with ash, as if the oxygen molecules refused to enter my chest. I pressed my palm against my ribcage, not to feel my heartbeat, but to make sure my heart was still there... or if something had violently ripped it out.
An unbearable weight settled deep inside my chest a crushing pressure that made standing tall feel like a lie. I wasn’t breathing; I was swallowing an endless void.
The fatal irony was tearing me apart from within. Me... Robert... the man who had mocked the idea of "settling down" and "family" his entire life. The man who viewed children as nothing more than an inconvenient burden on the path to power, or a "weakness" unfitting for a man like me... Here I was, collapsing under the ghost of a child.
I had never wanted them. I never thought I possessed an ounce of fatherly tenderness. But the thought that a piece of me and a piece of her had entered this world and left without me ever touching him, without me ever protecting him, shattered my essence like fragile glass beneath a sledgehammer.
This pain wasn’t just grief... it was complete internal disintegration. As if my heart the organ I believed had turned into solid stone, immune to blood and gunfire had suddenly crumbled into bitter dust.
Dizziness hit me hard, a cold chill creeping into the tips of my fingers. The air around the car wasn’t just thin; the entire world felt empty, devoid of meaning. How did Julie survive this? How did she carry all this agonizing pain by herself for all these years? How did she stand before me with all that broken courage?
I gripped the edge of the car door so hard my knuckles turned stark white. I closed my eyes, as the image of that child I had never even seen danced behind my eyelids like a ghost demanding a vengeance that could never be fulfilled.
"A son..." I whispered, the word bitter enough to slice my throat open.
I, who never cared for children... found myself aching, wishing I could turn back time. Not to save myself, but to save that little soul that once beat inside Julie... To hold him... To see him... To be a father, even if only for a single minute before it all ended.