Jealousy Alpha's Regret novel Chapter 184

Chapter 184

Iris’s POV

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Jack Lowell moved to stand beside me, his eyes misty. “My daughter, Lily. Your mother.”

I felt my knees go weak. Jack guided me to sit on the edge of the bed, then retrieved an album from the bedside table.

“These are all her,” he said, opening the album across my lap. “From when she was a little girl. She always loved design, said she’d be a designer when she grew up. She had a gift for it. A rare talent in our family.”

My hands trembled as I turned the pages. Each photo showed a girl, then a young woman, who could have been my twin. The same eyes, the same expressions, the same creative spark that I saw in my own design sketches.

“She…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. My throat felt too tight.

Jack’s voice was thick with emotion. “You look exactly like her at this age.

My head snapped up, my eyes wide with shock. I stared at Jack, then back at the photos, my mind struggling to process what he was saying.

“Are you telling me that I’m…” I couldn’t even say it.

Jack nodded, his eyes glistening. “When I first saw you, it was at my birthday party. You were in Sebastien’s car. I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

My hands were shaking so hard I could barely turn the pages. Each image was like looking into a mirror that showed not my reflection, but my origin. My true self.

“You’re my granddaughter, Iris,” Jack said, his voice breaking. “Lily’s daughter. Lowell blood.”

I sat in stunned silence, trying to absorb this revelation. All these years, I believed Catherine was my mother. All the abuse, the neglect, the feeling that I didn’t belong–it had been true in a way I never imagined.

After several minutes, I found my voice again. “What happened before? You didn’t know about me either? My mother… Lily Lowell,” I tested the name, finding it strange yet familiar on my tongue, “what happened to her

Jack shook his head sadly. “It’s the strangest thing. A grown woman, just disappeared. We looked everywhere, hired investigators, but never found a trace. A person doesn’t just vanish without a reason.” He sighed heavily. “We never got closure.”

listened to Jack speak, my emotions a tangled mess. This man was my grandfather–my blood relative. The family I never knew I had. Part of me wanted to cry, part wanted to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it all.

I looked at Jack’s heartbroken expression and felt something shift inside me. This man had lost his daughter and only now found her child. Before I could second–guess myself, I reached out and took his hand.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “These things happen slowly. At least now you’ve found me…

The word felt foreign on my tongue, but not wrong. Not at all wrong.

Grandpa.”

Jack’s eyes filled with tears. He clutched my hand tightly, as if afraid I might disappear too.

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14:37 Mon, Apr 13

Chapter 184

“Yes,” he said, his voice thick. “Yes, that’s good.”

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We spent another hour in Lily’s room, going through her belongings, Jack telling me stories about her childhood, her talents, her personality. Through his words and the items she’d left behind, I began to form a picture of the woman who had truly given birth to me–a woman with my same passions and talents, whose blood ran in my veins.

When night fell, I finally stood to leave.

“It’s getting late,” I said. “I should go.”

“Stay here,” Jack urged, his eyes hopeful. “This is your home too, after all.”

I smiled gently. “Let me adjust to this slowly, okay? I’m just next door. I’ll visit often, I promise. I just need to process everything.”

He nodded, understanding but clearly reluctant to let me go. “Of course. Take all the time you need.”

As I walked to the front door, Jack followed, watching me with a mixture of joy and sorrow.

“Don’t worry about those people online,” he assured me. “I will take care of it. They’ll regret speaking against you.”

I nodded, feeling a strange warmth at his protective words. “Thank you… for everything.”

At the doorway, I turned back and gave him a genuine smile. “Goodnight, Grandpa.”

His answering smile was radiant. He watched as I walked down the path, and I could feel his gaze on me until I reached my own door.

Back in my apartment, I checked my phone and found dozens of notifications. Friend requests, messages, comments–all from people who had previously ignored or been cold to me. Most shocking was a message from Jennifer Watson, Megan’s best friend:

“Iris, how have you been? I saw the trending topics–can’t believe you’re actually a Lowell! We should totally catch up sometime. No hard feelings about before, right?”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Of course,” I muttered to myself. “Now everyone wants to be friends with a Lowell.”

I didn’t respond to any of the messages. Instead, I walked to my window and looked out toward the Lowell house, where a light still shone in what I now knew was Jack’s–my grandfather’s–study.

“I have a family,” I whispered to myself, the reality of it finally sinking in. A real family.”

The thought filled me with a complex mixture of emotions–hope, confusion, anger at having been kept in the dark for so long, but most of all, a sense of belonging I’d never experienced before.

Tomorrow would bring more questions, more revelations perhaps. But for tonight, I allowed myself to simply exist in this new truth: I was Iris Stone, granddaughter of Jack Lowell, daughter of Lily Lowell.

I was a Lowell.