The CEO's Unwanted Bride

The Father

Chapter 15 —

He came without warning.

Mia was alone in the penthouse when the front desk called up — a Mr. Richard Cole requesting access. She hesitated for exactly three seconds, then told them to send him up.

She'd heard enough about Richard Cole to recognize him the moment the elevator doors opened. He had Ethan's height, his bone structure — but where Ethan's eyes were dark and watchful, his father's were pale and restless. The eyes of a man always calculating the nearest exit.

"You must be the new wife," he said, stepping in without being invited.

"And you must be the man who abandoned his son at sixteen." She smiled pleasantly. "Can I get you something to drink?"

He paused. Reassessed her. "You're not what I expected."

"People keep saying that." She gestured to the sitting room. "Ethan isn't here. But I suspect you knew that."

He sat. She sat across from him, back straight, hands folded — the posture she'd developed over weeks of board dinners and charity galas. She was no longer the girl who'd woken up with a ring she didn't choose. She was Mrs. Cole, and she'd earned that in ways the contract never covered.

"I want to talk about the estate," he said.

"Then you should talk to Ethan's lawyers."

"I want to talk to my son."

"Then you should have called." She held his gaze. "Or been there. For the past fifteen years."

Richard Cole leaned back. Something shifted in his expression — not guilt, exactly, but the shadow of it.

"He doesn't know what it was like," he said quietly. "After she died—"

"He does know what it was like," Mia said. "He was there. You weren't."

Silence.

She stood. "I'll tell him you came. What happens next is his choice." She walked to the door and held it open. "That's how it works, Mr. Cole. People get to choose."

He left without another word.

Mia stood at the window for a long time after, watching the city below.

When Ethan came home that evening, she told him everything. She didn't soften it, didn't frame it — just gave him the facts, clean and complete, and let him decide what to do with them.

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he sat beside her on the couch, leaned his head back, and said: "Thank you for not letting him in further than the sitting room."

"I thought about it," she admitted.

"What stopped you?"

She looked at him. "He hadn't earned it."

Ethan reached over and took her hand.

He didn't say anythi

ng else.

He didn't need to.