Married to My Ex's Father

Chapter5

Chapter 5: Welcome to Ashford Manor

"What do you mean he won't be coming home?"

Adrian didn't answer right away. He kept his eyes on the traffic beyond the windshield, his jaw set, and for a moment I thought he intended to ignore the question entirely.

Then Victor's gaze flicked to the rearview mirror, and his voice cut through the silence. "Sir. We've been followed since we left the apartment."

My stomach tightened instantly. "Followed by whom?"

"I don't know yet," Victor said, already easing the car into the next lane. "Give me a few minutes."

He took three turns in quick succession, merged onto the highway, then exited almost as soon as we'd entered it. A black SUV stayed exactly two cars behind us through every move, never closing the distance, never falling back.

"They're not trying to catch up," Adrian said quietly. "They're making sure we know they're there."

Victor pulled a sharp U-turn at the next intersection, and the SUV followed without hesitation. "Now I'm certain," Adrian said, and something in his tone told me this had stopped being a theory the moment the second car mirrored our turn.

I sat very still, my hands folded tightly in my lap. Danger had felt abstract until this moment, something spoken about in a private room with reassuring words attached to it. Watching a car deliberately trail us through empty streets made it real in a way no conversation could.

Two blocks later, the SUV finally peeled away, disappearing down a side street without explanation. Victor exhaled, though his shoulders didn't fully relax. "Either they already know where we're going," he said, "or they wanted us to know they were watching."

Nobody answered him. Both possibilities sat heavy in the silence that followed, and I understood that whoever was behind this didn't need secrecy. They wanted to be felt.

The gates of Ashford Manor opened before anyone spoke a word, sliding apart in perfect silence, as though the house itself had been waiting for us. The building beyond them was beautiful in a way that photographs never quite captured, all pale stone and towering windows catching the last light of the afternoon.

But the beauty didn't warm me. Everything about it felt too composed, too still, like a place built to be admired rather than lived in. It didn't feel like a home waiting to embrace me. It felt like a fortress deciding whether I belonged inside.

A woman stood waiting at the top of the front steps, silver-haired, dressed simply but impeccably, her expression unreadable until she saw me step out of the car. Her face softened immediately into something warm.

"Welcome home, Miss Hayes," she said.

"I'm not sure this is home," I answered honestly, because pretending otherwise felt like a lie I wasn't ready to tell.

The woman's smile didn't waver. "Homes have a way of surprising people," she said. "I'm Eleanor Brooks. I've been looking after this family for almost twenty years, and I intend to make sure you're comfortable in it."

Something in her steadiness eased a small part of the tension in my chest, the first genuinely kind welcome I'd received since stepping into this world.

Inside, Adrian led me to a private sitting room where Victor was already waiting with a folder of papers laid neatly across the table. "The contract," Adrian said, gesturing for me to sit. "I'd rather you read it yourself than take my word for what it says."

I expected pages of dense legal language, but Adrian had already marked several sections in blue ink, drawing my attention to specific lines. No control over personal freedom. No obligation to share a bedroom. One-year duration, ending by mutual agreement.

"You added these," I said, looking up at him.

He nodded once. "Marriage should never feel like ownership. Not after what you've already been through."

I studied him for a moment, searching for the catch I still half expected to find, but there wasn't one hiding in his expression. Only quiet, deliberate honesty, the same kind he'd offered since the moment he extended his hand at the altar.

Later that evening, alone in the room Eleanor had prepared for me, I opened the small ivory box Charlotte had given me and removed Ethan's engagement ring from my finger. I didn't cry. I didn't feel the urge to throw it across the room the way I might have hours earlier.

I simply placed it inside the box, closed the lid, and said the only words that felt true. "Some promises deserve to end with dignity."

I turned, and only then did I realize Adrian had been standing quietly by the doorway. He said nothing at all, and somehow his silence felt more respectful than any comfort he could have offered instead.

The peace didn't last. Phones began ringing throughout the house only minutes later, one after another, until Victor appeared in the hallway with his expression tight. "Sir," he said. "The press is outside the gates."

"How many?"

"Enough to block the road." Victor's eyes moved briefly to me. "Someone told them she was here."

Nobody in this house had announced my arrival publicly, which meant someone inside these walls had made a phone call they shouldn't have.

Adrian didn't hesitate. "We'll go out and address it," he said, "before they turn silence into a headline of their own making."

The moment we stepped outside, questions exploded from every direction. "Is she replacing Ethan?" "Is this marriage for business?" "Did she seduce Mr. Ashford?"

Adrian's voice cut through the noise without needing to rise above it. "My son abandoned Miss Hayes," he said. "I refused to."

The silence that followed felt different from the chaos before it, heavier, almost reverent. Then a reporter near the front called out, "Do you love her?"

"That isn't today's story," Adrian said, and the calm certainty in his voice silenced the crowd more effectively than any denial could have.

I stepped forward, lifting my chin the way I had at the cathedral only hours earlier. "I didn't lose my future," I said. "I chose a different one."

The cameras kept flashing, but something had shifted in the questions that followed, softer now, less accusation and more curiosity.

Vivian arrived just as the reporters began to disperse, stepping out of her car with the same effortless elegance she wore like armor. She approached me directly, holding out a beautifully wrapped box tied with gold ribbon.

"A housewarming present," she said, her smile pleasant enough to almost seem sincere. Then she turned and walked away without waiting for a response, leaving the gift in my hands like a quiet threat.

I opened it alone in my room that night, my curiosity outweighing my caution. Inside sat a framed photograph from what looked like an old family event, Ethan's face cut away so precisely that only a ragged outline remained beside the rest of the family.

I turned the frame over and found a single line written in smooth, deliberate handwriting.

Welcome to the family. You're replacing the wrong person.

My hands went cold around the frame. I had no idea who it was, and that single line frightened me more than anything Vivian had said to my face all day.

Sleep never came that night. Sometime after midnight, I gave up trying and made my way downstairs for water, only to notice a thin line of light beneath the study door at the end of the hall.

Voices drifted through the gap, low and tense, and I stopped without meaning to eavesdrop at all. A man's voice, unfamiliar, spoke first.

"If she discovers what really happened that night..."

A long silence followed before Adrian answered, his voice quieter than I'd ever heard it.

"Then she'll hate every one of us."

My pulse hammered against my ribs as I stared at the closed study door, because one thought refused to leave my mind.

If everyone in this house was hiding the same secret, what exactly had I married into?