He Made His Own Daughter Call Him Uncle

Chapter 2

By the time the island doctor listened to Aria's lungs, she was already running a fever.

"She inhaled quite a bit of water. We don't have the equipment here to do a full examination. She needs to be transferred to a hospital in the city as soon as possible."

I scooped Aria into my arms and headed for the door.

Charles followed me out. He took the blanket his assistant handed him and wrapped it tightly around Aria.

"I'll get the hotel to send a rescue boat."

He had barely finished making the call when a commotion broke out outside.

Just as Charles secured the boat, his manager called.

Someone had uploaded a secretly recorded video of Aria falling into the pool.

The clip didn't show Liam pushing her. It started with Aria already in the water, then ended right at the moment I pointed at Liam and said I was calling the police.

Within minutes, it shot to the top of the trending list.

#BestActorSecretlyMarriedWithaDaughter

#BestActor'sWifePubliclyBulliesFatherlessChild

#AccidentRocksFamilyRealityShowSet

The comments were flooded with people demanding that Aria and I come out and apologize.

Someone even dug up the fact that Liam's father had died years ago, accusing me of going after a poor child who had already grown up without a dad.

Aria rested weakly against my shoulder. "Mommy, why are they mad at me?"

I covered my phone screen.

Charles stood by the window, answering one call after another.

The production team, sponsors, and his agency were all pressuring him to make a statement.

10 minutes later, he walked over to me.

"Fiona, put out a statement first. Say the kids were fooling around and it was an accident. Say we won't pursue the matter with Liam."

His manager had sent him two PR plans.

The first was to release the full video and acknowledge that Liam had pushed Aria.

The second was to call it an accident caused by children playing around, protecting both Liam and the commercial value of the show.

Charles looked at them for barely 15 seconds before opening the second one.

"We need to get this under control first. We can't have the whole internet tearing apart a seven-year-old kid."

I looked at him. "And what about the people tearing Aria apart?"

His hand tightened around the phone. He didn't answer.

The statement on the screen was short.

The first line said Charles would cover all of Aria's medical expenses.

The second said Liam had lost his father at a young age and asked the public to stop attacking him.

Not a single word mentioned that Liam had pushed Aria. Not one sentence defended her.

It was as if my daughter had fallen into a six-foot-deep pool just to make another child look more pitiful.

For a second, I thought I had misheard him.

"You saw him push Aria. If Liam had been the one who fell into that pool today, would you be telling Doris not to make a big deal out of it?"

I stared at him, unwilling to miss even the slightest change in his expression.

Last year, Liam got into a fight with another kid at preschool. Charles had flown back overnight from another city to stand beside Doris and apologize to the other child's parents.

But when Aria was hospitalized with acute gastroenteritis, all he'd said over the phone was that filming couldn't stop.

"Sign whatever they need you to sign and tell me how it goes."

Charles fell silent.

I took Aria's pale, waterlogged little hand and held it up in front of him.

"She almost died right in front of you."

Pain flashed through his eyes. He reached out and took our daughter's hand.

Aria instinctively pulled away.

His fingers closed around nothing.

From outside the room, Doris's choked voice drifted in. "Charles, don't make things harder for Fiona. I'll take Liam and leave."

Liam immediately burst into tears. "Uncle Charles, I don't want to go! They're going to arrest me!"

Charles shut his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them again, he handed me his phone.

The statement was already drafted.

All it needed was for me to hit post.

"Liam is just a kid too. He's the only child my brother left behind. Fiona, I'm begging you. Don't ruin his life."

Every word sounded like a plea. But his body was planted firmly in front of the door to Doris and Liam's room, protecting them.

When I didn't move, Charles softened his tone.

"The statement will only stay up for 24 hours. Once Aria is stable, I'll make Liam apologize to her properly."

Just like he used to when he wanted to calm me down, he reached out to brush the wet hair away from my temple.

I turned my head and dodged his hand. "If Aria hadn't been rescued, would you still be waiting for her to 'stabilize' before we talked about it?"

All the color drained from his face.

But the second Doris coughed outside the door, Charles instinctively turned toward the sound.