Page 204 of Broken Destiny

After we agreed on the date and time, I ended the call and sat there for a long moment, staring at the silent phone in my hand.

My thoughts drifted back to the previous week when Caleb finally told me the truth.

The children had already gone to bed, and the house was wrapped in a heavy stillness when Caleb sat beside me in the living room.

“Jiya,” he said carefully. “There’s something you need to know about your father.”

The word father hit me like a sudden jolt.

I had never used that word for anyone. It had always felt distant—something that belonged to children who grew up knowing where they came from.

“What happened?” I asked quietly.

Caleb took my hand, holding it in his.

“There was an accident at one of our factories years ago,” he said. “A mechanical failure. Your father, Carlos Sanchez, was badly injured. He needed urgent medical treatment and financial assistance. My mother handled accident claims and liability matters for the company at the time.”

My chest tightened slowly.

“This happened long before you and I met,” Caleb continued. “My parents were still running the company then. None of us children were involved in the business.”

I nodded slowly, trying to keep my breathing steady.

“My mother saw the situation as a legal risk,” he said. “She wasafraid that helping him would set a precedent and attract attention from the press and damage the company’s reputation. So she chose not to offer any assistance.”

The room felt unbearably quiet.

“My father trusted her judgment and didn’t know the details,” Caleb added gently. “None of us did.”

He squeezed my hand.

“Unfortunately, your father did not survive,” he paused. “I am deeply sorry, Jiya. What happened to him should never have happened.”

I stared down at our joined hands.

“He didn’t want me,” I whispered.

The ache behind those words had lived inside me for years.

“My mother told me he walked away the moment he found out she was pregnant. He chose absence long before I ever knew his name.”

Quietly, I told Caleb about my biological mother and how we had slowly begun rebuilding our relationship after years apart.

Caleb pulled me into his arms and held me against his chest, one hand sliding gently into my hair while the other rubbed slow circles along my back, as though he already understood that I was barely holding myself together.

Wrapped in his warmth, with the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my cheek, the weight of everything finally crashed over me.

That night, I cried in his arms for the father I never knew, for the years my mother and I had lost, and for the painful way everything between us had unfolded.

And through it all, Caleb never let me go.

Now, as I reached Caleb’s parents’ mansion in Point Grey, the house rose before me grand and imposing as always, but today it felt different—quieter, heavier, as though the walls themselves carried the weight of everything that had finally been revealed.

I stepped inside and made my way to the dining room.

Eleanor was already seated there.

For a moment, I barely recognized her.