The Billionaire Ex-Wife's Return (Cynthia and Ethan) novel Chapter 229

Chapter 229

Cynthia's POV

“We were young. It was complicated." Victoria continued, her voice steadier now, like the worst of the confession was over. The tension that had coiled around her shoulders when she first began speaking had loosened, just slightly, as though the act of finally saying the words aloud had relieved her of some invisible weight she'd been carrying for years.

"Your father eventually married me," she said, her hands folded neatly on the table. "And that decision caused a permanent rift. Grace stopped speaking to me. Stopped speaking to Eleanor. She cut us off completely."

Eleanor nodded slowly, her expression weighed down with decades of guilt. She looked older in that moment—not in the physical sense, but in the way people look when they've been carrying something too heavy for too long. Like the memory itself had aged her.

"After that," Victoria continued, "I deliberately chose not to follow Grace's life. I moved on. Built my family. Built my business. Grace became… someone I used to know. A ghost from my past. Nothing more."

She paused, her gaze going somewhere distant—somewhere none of us in that room could follow.

"I didn't know—I truly didn't know—that she'd married Harold Walker. That she'd become Grace Walker. Not until a few days ago, when she had her accident."

"And that's when Eleanor told you," Nathaniel said quietly.

"Yes," Victoria confirmed. "Eleanor had been following the news about Walker Industries. About Ethan's scandals. And when she heard about Grace's accident, she connected the dots. She called me and told me that Cynthia's husband was the adopted son of Grace Harlow — the same Grace we'd known in high school."

My chest felt tight.

All these years. Was there a chance Grace knew that I was the daughter of the woman she grew to hate? Was that why she hated me from the very beginning despite all my attempts to make her love me?

Did Grace know who I really was all the while?

There’s no way she did, right?

I only came into their lives by coincidence. I was kidnapped alongside her son, Ethan and I lost my memory and was adopted.

But now there is so much revelation. Ethan isn’t even actually her son and she had been so good at her deceptiveness for over 34 years.

My heart thudded at the thought of the fact that she knew I was Cynthia Laurent and said nothing all the while since I was adopted after the kidnap.

Was she also behind the kidnap?

Oh no! Cynthia! You are thinking too far. There’s no way she is that evil. Only the devil could be that evil.

"So many weird family dynamics," Eleanor added weakly, trying to lighten the mood and failing spectacularly.

I stared at the table, my mind spinning.

This explained so much.

Grace's cruelty. Her manipulation. The way she'd looked at me like I was something she wanted to erase from existence. The subtle ways she'd undermined me over the years. If she knew I was a Laurent, then she had been punishing me for sins I hadn't committed.

Punishing me for being born to the people who had broken her heart.

It had never been about me.

It had always been about them.

About Victoria. About my father. About a love triangle that had happened four decades ago—before I even existed, before any of this had taken shape — and yet somehow its wreckage had reached all the way into my marriage, my life, my sense of self.

And I'd been caught in the crossfire.

Just then, my phone rang.

The sound cut through the heavy silence like a gunshot.

I glanced down.

Amber.

My heart lurched.

I ended the call and burst back into the dining room.

Everyone looked up immediately, sensing the shift in energy. The conversation died the moment they saw my face. I didn't know what I looked like in that moment, but whatever it was — whatever terror had taken over my expression — was enough to make Victoria go pale and Kevin push back his chair before I'd even opened my mouth.

"Cynthia…" Victoria started.

But I didn't stop.

I grabbed my keys from the sideboard, my hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped them.

"Cynthia, what's wrong?" Kevin asked, already standing.

"It's Ethan," I said, my voice breaking. "He collapsed. Amber said he won't wake up. I have to go. Now."

I didn't wait for a response.

I turned and ran.

"Cynthia, wait!" Kevin called after me.

But I was already out the door.

Already running down the front steps, the cold air hitting me like a wall.

Already fumbling with my car keys as I sprinted toward my car, I threw myself into the driver's seat, shoved the key into the ignition, and peeled out of the driveway so fast the tires screeched against the pavement.

The Laurent mansion disappeared in my rearview mirror.

And all I could think was one thing.

Please be okay. Please, Ethan, please be okay.