Chapter 9 - THE OPENING OF THE HEARTS
Ethan stood alone beside the table.
The noise of Victoria’s departure faded into nothingness. The chandeliers above continued to cast their warm, golden light across the white hydrangeas, the sterling silver, and the faded blue ribbon resting on the dark mahogany wood.
Ethan slowly walked around the table. He stopped in front of the chair where Emma stood.
For the first time in seven years, there were no lies between them. No legal contracts, no bitter assumptions, no third-party manipulations. There was only a man who had lost seven years of his life, and the woman who had carried the weight of his child alone in the dark.
Ethan dropped to his knees.
The towering, ruthless heir to the Blackwood empire—a man who had never bowed his head to anyone in his entire life—knelt on the marble floor of Le Ciel before Emma Carter.
He reached up, his large, trembling hands hovering inches from hers, terrified that if he touched her, she would vanish like a ghost.
"Emma..." Ethan choked out, tears finally breaking past his eyes and streaming down his face, cutting clean paths through his dark stubble. "Emma... I'm sorry. God... I'm so sorry..."
Emma looked down at the man kneeling at her feet.
She saw the raw, shattered boy she had loved in Brooklyn seven years ago—the man who had been buried beneath layers of corporate ice and engineered bitterness. Her own tears spilled over her eyelashes, falling softly onto the sleeve of her emerald-green dress.
She didn't step back. She slowly lowered herself, dropping onto her knees beside him on the cold marble floor.
She reached out, her slender, warm fingers gently cupping his jaw, tilting his face up so his grey eyes met hers.
"You were blind, Ethan," Emma whispered, her voice thick with emotion, though filled with a strange, healing grace. "You let them convince you that I didn't love you."
"I was a fool," Ethan wept, leaning his forehead against hers, his hands reaching up to clasp her wrists tightly, holding onto her as if she were his only salvation. "I spent seven years hating you... when all you were doing was protecting our son."
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Standing ten feet away, Richard Blackwood watched his son and the woman he had wronged kneeling together on the floor. The old billionaire let out a long, quiet breath, his shoulders relaxing for the first time in three years. He reached down, picked up the bundle of unopened letters tied with the blue ribbon, and set them gently beside Emma's purse.
"The letters are yours, Ethan," Richard said softly. "Read them together. When you are ready... your son is waiting inside."
