His Rejected Son

Chapter 10

Noah’s POV

I didn’t take them back to Bridget’s place.

The decision came easily, instinctively, before she even asked where we were going. There were too many windows there, too many ways in, too many things I couldn’t control. If someone had already followed us once, I wasn’t going to hand them a second opportunity.

So I drove to the penthouse, not the one the tabloids knew about, not the one people associated with parties, meetings, or the polished image of Noah Webber the business magazines liked to sell. This one sat high above the city in a building registered under another company name, with private security, restricted access, and enough distance from the life most people thought I lived.

It was safe, at least in theory.

The ride up from the underground garage was silent. Bridget stood beside Bryan in the elevator with her hand resting protectively on his shoulder, like she thought I might turn into a stranger again if she gave me too much space. Bryan leaned into her side, quieter than before, the adrenaline of the chase finally beginning to wear off.

When the elevator doors opened, he looked around with wide eyes.

“Whoa.”

It was the first time he’d sounded like a child in the last twenty minutes.

The penthouse opened into a wide living area of glass, stone, and muted light. The city stretched beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows in cold lines of silver and gold, glittering as if nothing ugly could possibly exist beneath it. Usually, I like that view. Tonight it felt almost offensive.

Bryan stepped inside slowly, taking everything in. “You live here?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

He looked impressed. Then suspicious. “How many houses do you have?”

Under any other circumstances, I might have laughed. “Too many.”

That got the faintest smile out of him, but Bridget didn’t smile.

She turned to face me as soon as the elevator doors shut behind us. The tension she’d held together during the drive was no longer contained. I could see it in the rigid set of her shoulders, in the way she crossed her arms, like she had to physically hold herself together to stop from shaking.

“This isn’t my home,” she said.

“No.”

“I’m not staying here.”

“You are tonight.”

Her eyes flashed immediately. “You don’t get to make that decision for me.”

“This isn’t about what you want,” I said, more bluntly than I intended. “It’s about what keeps you and Bryan alive until I know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

The words landed hard in the room.

Bryan looked from me to his mother, suddenly still.

Bridget stared at me for a long second, anger burning in her face, but underneath it, I saw something else, too. Fear. Not for herself. Never for herself. For him.

That was the only reason she didn’t keep fighting; instead, she exhaled sharply and looked away.

“Bryan,” she said, her voice gentler now, “Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”

He nodded and wandered toward the sofa, still holding the spoon from the ice cream he had long since finished. He climbed up carefully, his eyes moving over the room, curious despite everything. Children were strange that way. They could carry fear in one hand and wonder in the other without understanding the contradiction.

I waited until he was distracted by the city lights beyond the windows before I turned back to Bridget.

“Start talking,” she said.

There was no hesitation left in her voice now. No uncertainty. Just exhaustion and fury, sharpened into demand. I didn’t blame her; she had every right to hate me for the past. Every right to distrust me in the present. But I was done with half-truths, and tonight had made one thing painfully clear: whatever had been buried seven years ago was no longer staying buried.

“I think I know who sent that car.”

Her expression hardened immediately. “Then say it.”

I held her gaze.

“My brother.”

For a moment, she didn’t react at all. It was as if the answer moved through her too slowly to register.

Then she blinked. “What?”

“Adrian.”

She gave a short, disbelieving laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Noah, that doesn’t explain anything.”

“It explains more than you think.”

I moved farther into the room, loosened my tie, and then stopped with one hand braced against the edge of the kitchen counter. I was more tired than I had realized. Not physically. Something deeper than that. The kind of exhaustion that came from watching pieces of your life suddenly rearrange themselves into a pattern you should have seen years ago.

Bridget followed me with her eyes, waiting.

“When you told me you were pregnant,” I said slowly, “I believed the worst too quickly.”

Her face changed at once. Whatever anger had been there deepened into something older, rawer.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You did.”

The memory came back with a force I didn’t expect, her standing in front of me, hurt and furious and still somehow hopeful that I would choose her over the poison that had already been poured into my head. I had failed that test spectacularly.

“At the time,” I continued, “I thought my parents were the ones driving it. I thought they were the reason everything collapsed.”

“You thought?” she repeated, the bitterness in her voice impossible to miss. “They were the reason. They paid me to leave.”

My jaw tightened. “Yes. But they didn’t come up with that on their own.”

She went still. I looked toward Bryan. He was sitting quietly, tracing shapes into the fogged edge of the glass table with his fingertip, close enough to hear if we raised our voices, too far to catch every word if we didn’t, so I lowered mine.

“My brother had more to gain than anyone.”

Bridget frowned. “Gain from what? Ruining our lives?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me.

I pushed through the rest before I lost the nerve to say it aloud.

“If I had married you, if we’d had a child, that child would have changed the line of succession in the family. Not just personally. Financially. Legally. Publicly. Everything.”

Her eyes flicked instantly toward Bryan.

Understanding moved over her face in a slow, terrible wave.

“And Adrian…” she whispered.

“Would have lost position. Influence. Maybe eventually control.”

She turned fully toward Bryan now, as though seeing him through a different lens—not just as her son, not just as the boy she had spent seven years loving and protecting, but as someone whose existence threatened the foundation of a family empire he had never asked to be born into.

When she looked back at me, there was disbelief in her eyes, and disgust, too. “So all of this… all of it… happened because your brother was afraid of a child who didn’t even exist yet?”

The words hit harder than they should have.

“Yes,” I said.

She let out a shaky breath and pressed a hand to her forehead. “That is insane.”

“No,” I said quietly. “It’s calculated.”

That made her look at me again, and because there was no point pretending anymore, I said what I had been circling around since Bryan's school.

“The moment he saw Bryan, or had confirmation that Bryan exists, this stopped being history.”

Her face paled. “Noah…”

“He knows what Bryan means.”

Across the room, Bryan turned his head. “What do I mean?”

The innocence of the question cut straight through me. Bridget moved immediately, crossing to him and kneeling beside the sofa. “Nothing bad,” she said, brushing a hand through his hair. “The adults are just talking.”

He looked from her to me, too perceptive to be fully reassured. “Is this about the car?”

I walked over slowly and crouched in front of him so we were at eye level.

“Yes,” I said.

He swallowed. “Did I do something wrong?”

The question cracked something inside my chest so suddenly that for a second I couldn’t speak.

“No,” I said finally, and my voice came out lower than before. “None of this is your fault.”

He searched my face as though trying to decide whether he believed me.

Then, very softly, “Then why would someone follow us?”

Children deserved simple truths, but life had a habit of offering complicated ones.

“Because some people get scared when something important shows up in their lives,” I said.

He considered that. “Am I important?”

Bridget made a sound beside him, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

I held his gaze. “Yes.”

He looked down, absorbing it in that quiet, serious way of his. Then he nodded once, as if filing the answer away for later.

Bridget stood and moved a little farther off, wrapping her arms around herself again. When she spoke, her voice had changed. It wasn’t just anger anymore. It was fear sharpened by memory.

“This is exactly why I stayed away,” she said. “I didn’t want Bryan anywhere near your family, your money, or whatever this world does to people.”

I rose to my feet and looked at her.

“He won’t be near them.”

Her laugh this time was harsher. “You can’t promise that.”

“Yes, I can.”

She shook her head. “Noah, you don’t get it. I spent years making sure no one could use him. No one could drag him into something ugly just because of your last name.”

“And I spent years not even knowing he existed,” I said, my voice hardening despite myself. “So believe me when I say I understand more than you think.”

We stared at each other.

There were too many things packed into that silence: resentment, grief, blame, the ruins of what we had once been. And beneath it all, something more dangerous now: the fact that our lives were tied together whether either of us wanted that or not.

Finally, she looked away first.

“What happens now?”

I glanced at Bryan. He was watching us quietly, no longer pretending not to listen. I knew the answer the moment she asked, but saying it made it real.

“Now,” I said, “I find out exactly how much Adrian knows.”

“And if he’s really behind this?”

The question hung there. I thought of the car. The timing. The precision. The years behind us and the boy sitting in front of me, who should never have had to become relevant to men like my brother.

Then I met her eyes again.

“If he came after my son,” I said, and the words sounded strange and right at the same time, “then this ends with me.”

The room went silent after that.

Outside, the city kept glittering. Traffic kept moving. Somewhere far below, people laughed, argued, and went on with their lives, but up here, something had shifted.

This was no longer about suspicion, or proof, or even the past. It was about protection now, and for the first time in a very long time, I wanted something with enough force to terrify me. I wanted them safe, not the idea of them, not the responsibility, just them.

Bridget. Bryan. My family, whether they were ready to hear that word or not.

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