My Daughter Called Me Uncle

Chapter 004

Eight years ago, Serena Ashford had stood on the platform of the Northbound Express, her heart breaking in sync with the rhythmic chugging of the locomotive. She had watched the man she loved, Derek Faulkner, disappear into the swirling mists of the Northern Front. She had stayed until the tracks were empty, clutching her stomach, where a secret life was just beginning to take root. She believed, with the naive ferocity of a young bride, that her status as the firstborn heir of the Ashford family would protect her until his return.

She was wrong.

Three days after the train left, the sky fell. Her father was accused of embezzling from the family treasury—a frame-up she couldn't prove—and within hours, the entire branch of her family was purged. The Grand Lady Ashford herself had signed the decree: Serena was stripped of her title, her wealth, and her dignity.

But the Ashford family didn’t stop at exile. They issued the "Great Ban," a shadow-edict whispered into the ears of every CEO and business owner in Riverbend. Any company that hired the disgraced Miss Ashford would face the full, crushing weight of the family’s industrial empire.

Overnight, the woman who was once Riverbend's most coveted woman, a business prodigy who could command a boardroom with a whisper, became a pariah. She was a highborn lady turned into a beggar.

She remembered the first winter. She had been seven months pregnant, her belly swollen and heavy, wandering the back alleys of the city while the elite of Riverbend attended galas in their heated manors. To survive, she had done the unthinkable. She had scavenged. She remembered the metallic tang of rain-slicked dumpsters, the shame of digging through the trash of restaurants she used to dine in, looking for scraps to fuel the life growing inside her. She did it all for him. She did it for the promise of a man who was fighting in the Deadlands.

Then came Lemon Faulkner. And with the child came a new, more terrifying kind of poverty. Lemon was born small and pale, a delicate flower in a garden of thorns. When the diagnosis of leukemia came, the modest life Serena had built by picking through recycling and working off-the-books cleaning jobs shattered.

In her moment of absolute desperation, a predator had appeared with a "helping hand."

Peter Yates.

He had offered her a job at the Blue Horizon Club. He didn’t want her business mind; he wanted her shame. He forced her to wear the uniform of a club hostess—a short, revealing skirt and a silk blouse that felt like a brand against her skin. He wanted the world to see the fall of the Miss Ashford. He wanted to see the "purest woman in the city" serving drinks to street thugs and spoiled heirs.

"Boss... please," Serena whispered, her voice trembling as she stood in the opulent V.I.P. suite of the club. "I... I’ll pour your wine."

She forced a smile, but it was a brittle, ghastly thing. The room smelled of expensive cigars, sandalwood, and the underlying rot of a man who had too much power and no conscience. Every fiber of her being screamed to run, but she saw the hospital invoices in her mind's eye. She saw the purple bruises on Lemon’s arms.

If Derek were here...

The thought was a recurring phantom. Eight years of silence. Eight years of watching the news from the Northern Front, seeing reports of the Reaper and the Supreme Warlord, never knowing if the man who held her that final night was among the dead or the legendary. She was at her breaking point.

"Pouring wine?" Peter Yates sat on the velvet sofa, nursing the bruised ribs Derek had given him earlier that afternoon. His face was twisted with a dark, vengeful l**t. "No, Serena. I’m tired of the games. I’m tired of you acting like a woman of virtue while you're on my payroll."

He pointed to the seat beside him. "Sit down."

Serena bit her lip, the taste of copper filling her mouth. The power dynamic in the room was suffocating. "Director... you are the employer, and I am merely an employee. There is a natural distance between us. My standing ensures your... your dignity is upheld."

She hated herself for the flattery. She was a highborn lady reduced to using the language of a servant to protect her body. The Ashford family had taught her how to speak to kings; now she was using those skills to survive a dog.

Peter Yates let out a harsh, barking laugh. "The Miss Ashford! Still so eloquent, even when she's drowning in the gutter. You think that high-and-mighty talk still works? To me, you’re just a 'pretty face' with a dying brat at home."

He slammed a fist onto the low table, making the crystal glasses rattle. "I said sit down! I am the one who pays for your daughter's life! I am the one who keeps the doctors from throwing her into the street!"

Serena’s legs felt like lead. She moved forward, her pride screaming in agony, and sat on the very edge of the sofa, as far from him as the cushions allowed.

"That’s better," Peter sneered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out several thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills, tossing them onto the table. They landed with a heavy thud—the sound of salvation. "There’s a hundred thousand dollars here. It’s the advance you asked for. The money that keeps Lemon in her hospital bed."

Serena’s eyes fixed on the money. It was enough. It was more than enough for the next round of treatment. Her hand reached out, trembling, her fingers grazing the paper.

"Wait," Peter said, his voice dropping to a predatory purr. He picked up a glass of deep red wine. He had already slipped a small, fast-acting sedative into it—a "gift" from a local chemist. "Nothing in this world is free, Serena. You want the money? Drink this. Drink the whole glass, and the cash is yours. No questions asked."

The wine shimmered under the chandelier light, looking like spilled blood. Serena looked at the glass, then at the money, then at the door. She knew what happened to women who drank alone with men like Peter Yates. She knew she would wake up tomorrow with her dignity in tatters, a victim of a man she loathed.

"What are you waiting for?" Peter mocked. "Still waiting for that 'hero' husband of yours? The one who ran away eight years ago? The one who left you to pick through trash while he played soldier?"

"He didn't run away," Serena snapped, a spark of the old, fiery Miss Ashford flashing in her eyes. "He is a man of the Empire. He is fighting for our country. He is a man of honor!"

But even as she said it, the doubt—the poison Peter had been dripping into her ear for months—began to burn. Where was he? Where was he when she was being spat on by her own cousins? Where was he when she was screaming in labor in a cold, rented room? Where was he when Lemon called out for a 'Daddy' who never came?

"Honor doesn't pay for chemotherapy, Serena," Peter whispered, leaning in closer. "Honor doesn't keep the rain off your back. I am the only reality you have. That man? He’s a corpse in a trench, or he’s in the arms of some other woman who didn't lose her fortune. He’s forgotten you."

The words were like daggers, finding every c***k in her armor. Serena felt her world tilting. The exhaustion of eight years of struggle, the weight of the "Great Ban," and the crushing fear for her daughter’s life finally broke the dam.

She reached for the wine.

Her hand was shaking so badly that the liquid sloshed against the rim. She looked at the red wine—the price of her soul. If she drank this, she could save Lemon. A mother’s love was supposed to be sacrificial, wasn't it? What was her virtue compared to her child’s breath?

"Drink," Peter urged, his eyes glowing with a sick triumph. "Drink, and let the pain go away."

Serena lifted the glass. Her lips touched the rim. She could smell the tannins, the sweetness, and the strange, chemical bitterness of the d**g. She closed her eyes, a single tear tracing a path through her makeup.

I'm sorry, Derek, she thought. I couldn't wait any longer.

CRASH!

The heavy mahogany doors of the V.I.P. suite didn't just open; they exploded inward. The massive brass hinges groaned and snapped as the doors slammed against the interior walls with the force of a detonating shell.

Serena jumped, the wine glass slipping from her fingers and shattering on the floor, staining the white carpet like a fresh wound.

Peter Yates leaped to his feet, his face pale with shock and fury. "What the hell? Who gave you permission to—"

His voice died in his throat.

Standing in the doorway was a man who looked like he had walked straight out of an ancient myth of retribution. He was drenched in rain, his black shirt clinging to a torso that seemed made of iron. His eyes weren't just angry; they were voids of freezing, absolute darkness. The air in the luxury suite, once warm and scented, suddenly plummeted in temperature. It was the presence of a man who had stood at death's door a thousand times and walked away every single one.

"You..." Peter stammered, recognizing the 'Uncle' from the grocery store. "You followed me here? Security! Security, kill this man!"

But no security came. Outside the room, the hallways of the Blue Horizon Club were silent—a silence that suggested the security team was already incapacitated or too terrified to move.

Serena stared at the man in the doorway. Her breath hitched. Her heart, which had been slow and heavy with despair, suddenly began to hammer against her ribs like a trapped bird.

The silhouette. The way he stood—shoulders square, head held high with a regal, natural authority. The eyes... she would know those eyes anywhere. They were the eyes that had looked at her with such tenderness eight years ago on a train platform.

"Husband..." she whispered, her voice a fragile, broken thing.

The word seemed to shatter the man’s icy composure. For a fleeting second, the terrifying warrior in the doorway vanished, replaced by a man whose face was a map of raw, agonizing regret.

Derek Faulkner stepped into the room. He didn't look at the money on the table. He didn't look at the cowering Peter Yates. He looked only at the woman he had left behind—the woman who had been forced to the brink of ruin while he was winning wars.

"I'm here, Serena," Derek said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that filled the room. "I'm back. And no one will ever make you drink from a cup of shame again."

The eight years of waiting, the picking of trash, the insults of the Ashford family, the fear for Lemon—it all came crashing down on Serena in a single, tidal wave of emotion. She didn't care about the money anymore. She didn't care about the club. She threw herself toward him, her legs giving way as she collapsed into his arms, her sobs racking her body.

Derek caught her, pulling her against his chest with a strength that felt like a fortress. He felt her thinness, the way her bones seemed too prominent, and his fury toward the world that had done this to her burned even hotter.

He looked over her shoulder at Peter Yates, and the man literally felt his knees buckle.

"You have five seconds to pray," Derek said, his voice as cold as the Siberian winds of the Northern Front. "Because for what you tried to do to my wife, the Empire itself cannot save you."