Chapter 1

After three years of grinding for the company, the boss finally decided to promote me.

Then, at the celebration dinner, two gold bars turned up inside the gift basket of local specialties I'd brought for him.

Everyone started whispering, saying my promotion had obviously been bought.

They sneered at the boss too, hinting he was on the take, that anyone with enough cash could climb the ladder.

He was so furious he slapped me across the face and stripped me of my position on the spot.

I dragged myself home in a daze, and just outside the door I overheard my mother and my son talking.

"I hope your father won't blame me for being so hard-hearted. I only did it for the good of this family."

"Grandma, it's not your fault. I'm the one who put the gold bars in there."

"Dad's always holding Uncle Nathan Delgado down at work. If he really got promoted, then Uncle Nathan never could."

"I just want Uncle Nathan to be happy. Then he'll buy me presents."

My wife came out of Nathan's room in a sexy nightgown, worn out but with a satisfied look on her face.

"Keep it down, all of you. Nathan just fell asleep."

My son went over and hugged her. "Mommy, Grandma said you've got a little brother in your tummy, is that true?"

"Yes. But you can't tell your father, understand?"

……

1

"Why not?"

My son asked Bernice Harding with that innocent little face.

She sighed and reached down to touch her belly.

It was still flat there. She must not have been pregnant long.

"Because… he's what your uncle and I couldn't have. Our regret, made real."

"He's not your father's at all. If your father found out, he'd get angry and hit Uncle Nathan, and throw him out too."

The moment my son heard about someone hitting Nathan, he bristled like a hedgehog.

"No. Nobody's allowed to throw Uncle Nathan out. He's closer to me than Dad is."

"Dad's just annoying. All he does is work and make money. He never spends time with me or Mommy. I hate him!"

Standing outside the door, I heard every cruel word of it.

I felt hollowed out, every organ scooped away, the blood in my veins frozen, no feeling left anywhere.

My mother lifted my son into her arms. "Toby Abbott, now you remember. Don't ever tell your father about this, or—or this family falls apart too."

My son nodded obediently, then wanted down so he could run into Nathan's room.

He said he only felt safe sleeping next to Uncle Nathan.

After he left, Bernice glanced at the clock on the wall.

"Mom, doing this to Lucas Dickerson… isn't it too cruel?"

"He's your real son, after all. Nathan's only the son of the man who saved your life."

"Bernice, Lucas isn't fragile like Nathan. If he understands me, he'll accept my decision."

"His father saved my mother's side of the family. Now that our benefactor is gone, it's only right that I take care of his son."

"But I never thought Lucas would keep pushing Nathan down at the company, tripping him up at every turn, even forming little cliques to freeze him out. If Lucas had really been promoted and become Nathan's boss, there's no way he wouldn't have made Nathan's life hell."

When my mother finished, she looked down at Bernice again. "You don't need to worry about a thing. Just rest and have the baby for him."

"After all, you always regretted not choosing Nathan. Carrying his child this time can make up for that regret." With that, my mother went into her room to rest. My wife smoothed down her nightgown, turned, and went into the kitchen to make a bowl of egg noodle soup.

And me, I'd already been knocked flat by the cruel truth, collapsed on the ground.

So it was my own family who'd branded me with that bribery scandal.

For the sake of one adopted son, they hadn't hesitated to do this to me.

I don't know how to describe the grief of that moment. Tears had already blurred my eyes.

What I couldn't accept was that Bernice was carrying Nathan's child.

And that she'd put my own son up to slipping the gold bars into the gift basket.

My mother knew too. Not only did she not stop it, she stood by and watched me get saddled with the cuckold's horns and the ruined name.

In that moment, it hurt so much I could barely breathe.

Me, holding Nathan down at the company? Me, isolating him, leaving him helpless?

He was the one who loafed around, drawing a paycheck without doing a thing, dragging the whole team down until we couldn't hit our numbers.

As the one in charge, how was I supposed to not straighten him out?

I never imagined he'd measure a decent man by his own petty heart and claim I was persecuting him.

And my whole family chose his side, trusting him completely, all of them stabbing me in the back together.

In the middle of all this, I got a message from a friend: Lucas, are you really not going to consider coming to work for me? Your skills are wasted at that company.

He was right. With my abilities I could fly a lot higher.

I'd only been chained to this small place because of my wife and son.

And now they'd gone and made the choice for me.