Chapter 5 - The Forbidden Equation
Declan took another slow, stumbling step forward, his polished shoe crossing the boundary line between the public pedestrian walkway and the private perimeter of Cassidy’s vehicle. His dark hair was slightly mussed by the wind, the immaculate composure that had defined him an hour ago now shattered into unrecognizable fragments.
"When were they born?" Declan asked.
The question was barely a whisper, but it carried the desperate, suffocating agony of a condemned man begging for a reprieve he knew would never come. His hazel eyes were locked onto Cassidy’s face, searching every contour of her features, begging her for a lie—begging her to say they were adopted, begging her to name another man, begging her to spare him the devastating truth that he had fathered three daughters and abandoned them to the world.
Cassidy did not give him a reprieve.
She reached down with her left hand, taking Sophie’s small, warm fingers into her own. Her grip tightened fractionally—not in anger, but in the fierce, instinctual defense of a mother shielding her cubs from an approaching storm. Lily and Ava felt the shift in their mother’s posture and pressed themselves even closer against her legs, their little faces growing solemn, their childish laughter fading into cautious curiosity.
The bright Atlanta sunlight reflected off the chrome trim of the black Lincoln, casting a blinding, golden glare across the sidewalk. Cassidy lifted her chin, her fair, rosy skin glowing with an unyielding, sovereign dignity. The faint, polite smile that had lingered on her lips vanished entirely, replaced by a cold, unwavering clarity that pinned Declan Hawthorne to the spot.
"May sixteenth," Cassidy stated.
The words fell like executioner’s stones into the space between them.
May sixteenth.
Declan’s mind spun violently backward through the calendar of his life. Five years ago. The divorce papers had been stamped and certified by the clerk on August twenty-first.
August to May. Exactly nine months. Exactly forty weeks.
To the very day.
It had happened during that final, tempestuous thunderstorm in the master bedroom of the Buckhead estate. The night they had thrown venom at each other until exhaustion took over, the night they had collapsed into each other’s arms in a desperate, tragic attempt to remember why they had ever fallen in love in the first place. When the sun had risen the next morning, Declan had put his suit back on, poured himself a black coffee, and told her that a clean break was best for both of their reputations. He had walked out the front door, leaving her with a cashier’s check for five hundred thousand dollars and a non-disclosure agreement.
She had torn the check into sixteen pieces and left it on the kitchen island.
Declan’s chest heaved. He felt the blood pounding against his temples like the rhythmic strike of an iron anvil.
"May sixteenth..." Declan rasped, his voice breaking into a ragged, pathetic whisper. "Cassidy... that means... that was the night of the storm. In Buckhead."
Cassidy didn't confirm it with words. She didn't need to. The silence in her eyes was an absolute, devastating indictment.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Declan choked out, his hands reaching forward involuntarily, hovering in the empty air between them as if he wanted to grasp at the ghosts of five lost years. "Why in God’s name didn't you tell me you were pregnant?"
"Because you told me what I was worth to you, Declan," Cassidy replied, her voice dropping into a register of icy, razor-sharp calm that cut far deeper than any scream ever could. "You stood in that foyer and told me I was nothing without your name. You told me I would crawl back to you when the money ran out."
May you like
She took a half-step back toward the open door of the SUV, pulling her daughters smoothly with her.
"I decided my children would never grow up believing their mother was a beggar at your table."
