Chapter 5: The Price of a Name
By nightfall, the Caldwell estate was locked down like a fortress.
Two dark SUVs belonging to a private security firm were parked at the iron front gates, their headlights cutting through the damp November mist. Inside, the grand house was strangely quiet. The extra catering staff had been sent home, the rehearsal dinner canceled, and the rumors were already spreading through Greenwich high society like wildfire.
I sat on the edge of a massive, velvet-draped bed in the second-floor guest suite.
It was a room I had vacuumed twenty times, but I had never dared to sit on the furniture. Now, I wore a pair of clean cotton sweatpants and a soft sweater that Ethan’s staff had brought up for me, while my grey maid's uniform lay folded in a trash bag by the door.
Across the room, sitting on the plush rug, Ethan was on his hands and knees, playing with Lily.
He had brought up an old wooden train set from the attic—one he had used as a boy—and was patiently showing Lily how to connect the track pieces. Button the rabbit was seated proudly in the caboose.
"And then the train goes choo-choo under the bridge," Ethan said, making a goofy whistle sound that made Lily erupt into a high-pitched, giggling fit.
I watched them from the bed, my heart torn between an overwhelming warmth and an agonizing dread.
He looks like a father, I thought, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. He really looks like her father.
A quiet knock at the door broke the moment.
Ethan stood up, smoothing his trousers, and opened the door. A tall, elderly man with sharp blue eyes and a leather briefcase stepped inside—Arthur Vance, Ethan's family attorney for thirty years.
"Ethan," Arthur said gravely, stepping into the room and giving me a polite, respectful nod. "We have a situation. Richard Haynes didn't wait for Monday morning."
Ethan’s posture instantly went rigid. "What did he do?"
"He leaked a story to the New York Post and Bloomberg an hour ago," Arthur replied, pulling a tablet from his briefcase and handing it to Ethan. "The headline claims you breached a corporate contract, assaulted your fiancée, and broke off the engagement due to an affair with a domestic worker."
My breath hitched in my throat. I stood up from the bed, my hands trembling. "An affair? He's making me look like a home-wrecker!"
"It gets worse, Mrs. Martinez," Arthur said gently, turning to me with a sympathetic expression. "Haynes' legal team has already filed an emergency petition in the Fairfield County Family Court. They are alleging that Ethan is unfit for corporate governance due to emotional instability, and they are preparing a public smear campaign against your character to question Lily's lineage."
"They're going to claim she isn't his," I whispered, the room spinning around me. "They're going to try to take her away or drag her name through the dirt in the tabloids!"
Ethan slammed his hand against the doorframe, the sound rattling the glass lamps on the nightstand. Lily jumped, her small train track slipping from her hands.
"They won't touch her," Ethan snarled, his eyes blazing with a terrifying, dark fury. "Arthur, release the official DNA results to the press the second the lab finishes processing the swab tomorrow morning. And draft a press release of our own."
"What kind of press release, Ethan?" Arthur asked, pen poised over his notepad.
May you like
Ethan turned, looking past the attorney straight at me. He walked across the room until he was standing inches away, his gray-green eyes searching my face with a fierce, unwavering devotion.
"Announce that Caldwell Logistics is severing all ties with the Haynes Group," Ethan said softly, his voice echoing clearly through the room. "And announce that I am establishing a fifty-million-dollar trust fund for my daughter, Lily Grace Caldwell... and that I am pursuing full legal marriage to her mother, Rosa Martinez."
