The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 108

Brother.

The word fell from Elias's lips like two colliding glaciers.

Hackett felt as though three hundred invisible nails had impaled him to the floor.

The elite composure he wore like armor—forged through thousands of high-stakes surgeries—was unraveling entirely.

His brain was screaming into overdrive, desperately digging through the ruins of his collapsing lie to find a single, rotting plank to hold it all together.

He cleared his severely dry throat, forcing a swallow to lubricate his tight vocal cords.

He looked up, meeting Elias's dead eyes, and forced out a terrifyingly steady response.

"Elias... we're so incredibly happy you're alive. But you've got this all wrong."

He even tried to force a heartwarming 'brothers reunited' smile onto his face.

"Manuel is yours. He really is. Clarissa... Clarissa used the last vial of frozen embryos you left at the military hospital to have him."

It was the perfect excuse. The final line of defense he and Clarissa had meticulously rehearsed a thousand times.

He was certain that if he clung to this narrative, the guests wouldn't be able to disprove it on the spot.

If he could just survive the next hour, he could still do damage control later.

However, he drastically underestimated Elias.

Or rather, he completely overestimated the strength of his own lies.

"Frozen embryos?"

A cruel, terrifying smirk touched Elias's lips.

It made Hackett feel as if a venomous snake had just flicked its tongue against his racing heart.

Elias looked at him like he was watching a pathetic clown performing a painfully obvious magic trick.

"The survival rate of the samples post-thaw was less than five percent, rendering them entirely medically unviable for any form of assisted reproduction."

He paused, letting the silence stretch before dropping the final, brutal hammer onto Hackett and Clarissa's heads.

"In other words, it is physically impossible for me, Elias Lehman, to get a woman pregnant via frozen embryo."

The medical report acted as a delayed explosive, sending absolute shockwaves through the banquet hall.

The hushed whispers exploded into sheer, unadulterated chaos.

"Oh my god! He brought the hospital receipts! There's no coming back from this!"

"Holy hell! So the kid in Clarissa's belly really is a bastard?!"

"Call Mrs. Wallace right now! Tell her she's missing the absolute drama of the century! This is way better than reality TV!"

The women in their Chanel suits, who usually prided themselves on their pristine manners, entirely dropped the act. They thrust their phones in the air, eagerly live-streaming the catastrophic downfall of the Lehman family to their absent friends.