Chapter 6 - The Confrontation
Inside the cottage, the knocking sounded soft, almost lost beneath the howling wind of the ocean storm.
Amy paused her rocking, her hands freezing on her swollen belly. She frowned, looking toward the door. It was 4:30 in the morning. The local snowplow drivers usually didn't come by until seven, and her neighbor, old Mr. Gable, was long asleep.
She stood up slowly, her hand instinctively resting on her lower back to support the heavy weight of her twenty-four-week bump. She walked across the hardwood floor, picking up a heavy brass poker from the fireplace tool stand.
"Who is it?" she called out, her voice cautious, echoing slightly in the small foyer.
A long silence answered her. Only the wind whistled through the cracks of the porch.
Then, a voice came through the thick wooden door. A voice she had heard in her dreams, in her nightmares, and in every quiet moment of her four years of marriage.
"Amy."
Amy froze. The brass poker slipped from her fingers, clattering loudly against the floorboards.
The blood rushed out of her head, leaving her lightheaded and dizzy. She reached out, grabbing the doorframe to steady herself.
No. It's impossible. He couldn't have found me.
"Amy, please," the voice rasped again, sounding broken, hoarse, and desperate. "Please open the door. It's freezing out here."
Amy closed her eyes, tears instantly hot against her cold cheeks. The peace she had spent six agonizing weeks building—the quiet, fragile sanctuary she had created for her child—shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.
"Go away, Daniel," she choked out, her voice shaking uncontrollably. "Please... just go away."
"I'm not leaving, Amy," Daniel called out, his forehead pressing against the outside of the door. "I drove through the blizzard. I'll stay on this porch until I freeze to death. Please... I just need to see you. I just need to see that you and the baby are okay."
Amy pressed her forehead against the inside of the door, listening to his ragged breathing.
She knew Daniel Harrison. She knew his stubbornness, his absolute refusal to accept defeat. If she didn't open this door, he would stand out there in a sub-zero storm until his heart stopped.
With shaking fingers, Amy slid the brass deadbolt back. She turned the key.
She pulled the door open.
The arctic wind swept into the warm cottage, bringing with it a cloud of swirling white snow.
Standing on the porch was the man she had loved more than her own life.
He didn't look like the billionaire CEO who had spun Vanessa Vance around a Manhattan ballroom six weeks ago. His eyes were sunken, dark red, and filled with a terrifying, raw grief. His beard was dusted with frost, his lips blue from the extreme cold, his designer coat soaked and covered in ice.
He looked at her, his eyes immediately dropping to her round, prominent belly.
A heavy, violent gasp hitched in Daniel’s throat. He took a half-step forward, his hands lifting instinctively as if to touch her, but he stopped himself, hovering his hands in the air, terrified that touching her would make her disappear like a phantom.
"Amy..." he whispered, tears freezing on his cheeks. "My God... Amy."
Amy stepped back into the warmth of the cottage, her posture defensive, wrapping her arms protectively around her stomach.
"Why are you here, Daniel?" she asked, her voice quiet, flat, but laced with a deep, vibrating pain. "How did you find me?"
Daniel stepped inside, closing the heavy wooden door behind him, shutting out the storm. He stood on the welcome mat, shivering violently, water pooling around his frozen boots.
"I hired everyone," he confessed, his voice raw. "I spent millions. I spent six weeks searching every inch of this country. Amy... I haven't slept. I haven't lived since the night you walked out of that hotel."
Amy let out a short, humorless laugh—a cold, bitter sound that shocked Daniel.
"You spent millions to track me down?" she asked, looking at him with flat brown eyes. "Of course you did. Because to you, Daniel, I'm just another asset that went missing from your balance sheet. You couldn't stand losing."
"No! That's not it!" Daniel begged, taking a step toward her, his gloved hands reaching out in desperation. "Amy, I don't give a damn about assets or winning! I lost you! I lost my wife! I lost my child!"
"You didn't lose us, Daniel," Amy said softly, pointing a trembling finger at his chest. "You threw us away. You traded us for champagne toasts, society covers, and Vanessa Vance."
"There was nothing between me and Vanessa!" Daniel yelled in desperate frustration. "I swear to you on my father's grave, Amy! I never touched her! I never slept with her!"
"It doesn't matter if you slept with her!" Amy screamed back, her emotional wall finally breaking into a torrent of tears. "Do you think I care about the physical act?! You gave her your time! You gave her your laughter! You gave her your respect while I sat alone in that empty, cold penthouse waiting for you to remember you had a wife!"
She sobbed, clutching her belly as the baby kicked hard inside her.
"I watched you dance with her, Daniel!" Amy wept, her voice echoing off the wooden rafters of the cottage. "I stood in that ballroom holding a photograph of your unborn child, and I watched you spin another woman in your arms while the whole world laughed at me! I was invisible to you!"
Daniel fell to his knees right there on the entryway rug.
The powerful, arrogant CEO of Harrison Capital collapsed at the feet of his pregnant wife, weeping openly, bowing his head until his forehead touched the toes of her soft slippers.
"I know," Daniel sobbed, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably. "I know I destroyed you. I know I was a monster. You were my home, Amy... and I set fire to it for nothing. For my own pathetic, disgusting vanity."
He looked up at her, his bloodshot eyes filled with absolute, unshielded agony.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight," he whispered, his voice broken. "I know I don't deserve it. But please... please don't push me out of our child's life. Please let me take care of you."
Amy looked down at the billionaire begging in the dirt on her floor.
May you like
Her heart ached with a deep, unbearable sorrow. Part of her wanted to drop to her knees and pull him into her arms—to comfort the man she had loved for four years. But a larger part of her—the part that was now a mother—remembered the cold, agonizing humiliation of that Manhattan ballroom.
"You can stay until the storm passes," Amy said quietly, turning her back on him and walking toward the bedroom. "Then you leave."
