The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 105

A heavy, suffocating stillness thicker than a grave.

The three hundred elite guests were frozen like statues, completely immobilized in whatever posture they had held a second before.

Only the trembling chandelier offered any movement, spilling its shattered light over the crowd.

Time felt permanently suspended.

Then, someone in the crowd let out a strangled, breathless gasp.

"Is... is that... Elias Lehman?!"

The whisper hit the room like a spark dropped into a powder keg.

"Oh my god! Am I seeing things? That's really him!"

"Didn't he die in action down south three years ago?!"

"What the hell is going on? Did he come back from the dead?"

Terrified, hushed, and completely frantic whispers spread through the crowd like a virus.

On stage, the gold microphone slipped from Clarissa's grip and clattered violently against the marble floor.

The feedback screamed through the speakers, a piercing, high-pitched squeal that drilled into everyone's skulls.

But no one even flinched at the noise.

Every single eye was locked on the man slowly walking into the room.

Lizzie's reaction was the most explosive.

She shot up from the grand armchair at the head table so violently she nearly flipped it over.

Her cloudy, tear-worn eyes stretched impossibly wide as she stared at the approaching figure.

Her lips trembled violently as she tried to form his name, but not a single syllable came out.

Her entire body began to shake uncontrollably.

Then, her knees buckled, and she fell backward.

"Lizzie!"

"Mom!"

The nearby staff and a frantic Hackett lunged forward to catch her.

But Lizzie didn't seem to notice their hands.

A terrifying, guttural sound tore from her throat—a horrific hybrid of a laugh and a sob.

"Elias..."

"It's Elias... I'm not crazy..."

She reached out a trembling hand, pointing at the man, her voice shattering into a hysterical screech.

"Elias! My boy!"

Hackett's face cycled through a dozen expressions in the span of three seconds.

Shock, terror, absolute disbelief—all coalescing into the bottomless panic of a man whose every lie had just been brutally exposed.

Finally, his eyes settled on the woman in the white wedding gown.

Or more accurately, on the little boy in the miniature black tuxedo she was holding, who was staring back at him with wide, curious eyes.

The room plunged into breathless silence once again.

Every guest craned their neck, waiting with bated breath for the dead man's first words.

Finally, Elias spoke.

His voice was impossibly deep and flat, completely devoid of anger or excitement.

He sounded like a man returning from a mundane business trip, stating an objective fact that had nothing to do with him.

But that suffocating calmness was infinitely more lethal than any screaming rage.

He looked at Clarissa, his lips curling into a microscopic, razor-sharp smirk.

"This 'belated wedding' is quite the spectacle."

He paused, his gaze shifting from Clarissa's ghostly face to the child in her arms.

The kid looked nothing like him.

Then, he asked the question that would permanently nail the Lehman family to the cross of public humiliation.

"I just have one question."

He didn't yell, but his voice echoed crisply into every corner of the vast room.

"How come I didn't know I was expecting another child?"