The Billionaire Ex-Wife's Return (Cynthia and Ethan) novel Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Cynthia’s POV

“Mom?” he whispered, walking toward me. “Mom, is that you?”

I looked at him, meeting his eyes and deliberately making no expression. I didn’t acknowledge him. I prepared for a day like this, no softening of the wall I’d built around my heart three years ago.

My driver moved smoothly, taking the briefcase from my hand and opening the car door. I stepped through without hesitation, without a backward glance.

He started to run towards me.

“Mom! Mom, you’re still alive! Mom! It’s me, Amber!”

The car door closed with a soft click, a barrier between us than any physical distance could be.

He reached the window, his small fists pounding against the glass desperately.

“Mom! Mom, don’t you recognize me? I’m Amber!”

I forced myself to look away, staring instead at the windscreen. The security guys gently but firmly pulled him away from the car.

He didn’t resist. He just kept crying, his voice muffled through the glass.

“Miss, are you okay?” My driver’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, concern creasing his forehead. “That boy…do you know

him?”

“I’m fine,” I said flatly. “Let’s go.”

The car accelerated smoothly away from the curb.

I know that’s my son. But I won’t break for his tears. I won’t let myself be moved by the sound of his voice calling me ‘mom‘. I won’t allow myself to feel the weight of what I’ve chosen to do, which is to walk away from him, just as I’ve taught him to walk away from me.

That night, alone in the hospital room, three years ago, fresh from surgery, drugged on painkillers and antibiotics, I’d lain in a hospital bed in Paris and scrolled through social media, stalking them and hoping to see that they were probably looking for me or grieving my disappearance. I checked Ethan’s I**› ***m. Anna’s I*******m. Any outlet that might show me what had happened to the life I’d left behind.

Amber was in almost every photo Anna posted.

Amber at the beach with Anna, her arm around him, his smile genuine and unguarded. Amber at a restaurant, Anna feeding him dessert while Ethan watched indulgently. They looked like one happy family and like no one actually left their life.

The captions were always the same: My beautiful boy. My precious Amber. Best day ever with this one.

And in every single photo, he looked happy.

My own son was happy without me in the picture, it was days after I had left and I doubt he noticed my disappearance.

I’d tracked the progression of his life through Anna’s curated feed like a woman studying autopsy photos, searching for evidence of damage that simply wasn’t there.

He wasn’t traumatized by my absence. He wasn’t pining for me or feeling abandoned. He was thriving. Growing. Becoming the kind of child who laughed easily and smiled often.

The kind of child I’d never been able to make him when I was… alive.

1/2

#13

+25 Bonus

The conclusion had felt inevitable: my son was better off without me. Not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically. In every meaningful way. Anna… that vile, manipulative, narcissistic Anna was somehow a better mother to him than I could ever be.

So I’d made a decision, lying in that hospital bed in Paris, my skull still tender from surgery, my body fragile but my mind resolute: I would let Amber go. I would grieve him and release him, like setting a bird free from a cage whose bars I’d never been able to bend. I would build a new life around the absence of my son, brick by painful brick, and I would convince myself it was noble. That it was love. That letting him go was the ultimate sacrifice a mother could make for a child who didn’t want her.

I told myself I could forget the boy I’d carried for nine months, my body aching and heavy with the weight of him, every kick a promise of a future I’d dreamed would be ours. I could forget the eighteen hours of labor, the pain so fierce it felt like my bones were splitting, the way I’d clung to Ethan’s hand in the delivery room, believing foolishly, that his presence meant he cared. I could forget nursing Amber through colic, pacing the nursery at 3 a.m. with his tiny body pressed against my chest, his cries softening only when I sang lullabies in a voice hoarse from exhaustion. I could forget the ear infections, the way he’d cling to me when the fever spiked, his small hands gripping my shirt like I was his whole world. I could forget the night terrors, when he’d wake screaming, and I’d hold him until his trembling stopped, whispering that I’d never let anything hurt him.

I could forget it all. I had to forget it all because remembering meant admitting that I’d weakly let Ethan and Anna and that venomous mother–in–law turn my son against me. I’d let their dismissal and cruelty convince me I was the problem and the one who didn’t belong. 1

In Paris, in those early days of recovery, I’d clung to that decision like a lifeline. My brothers and my mother filled the void with love so fierce it almost drowned out the pain.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify