The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 469

Chapter 469
Donovan’s POV 

I stand in my study, the phone pressing against my ear. Cassian’s question hangs in the silence, sharp with accusation. He wants the origin story. The moment I became a conspirator.

It comes back to me with perfect clarity. It was during that bleak period when everyone was hoping that Gemma was pregnant, but she wasn't. 

I went to the hospital myself, to procure the proper medication for her. But one must be cautious. Such things depend on the patient’s constitution. So, I arranged for a complete check-up. A simple, prudent measure.

She thought nothing of it. I thought nothing of it.

But then, the bloodwork. The nurse handed me the preliminary report, and a single line stopped my heart: Rh-negative. A rare type. A bell, deep and old, tolled in my memory. Among all the people I have ever known, only one family carried that specific rarity: the Bernards.

It sounded absurd, even to me. A flight of fancy. And yet… I knew they were searching. Desperately. For a daughter lost to circumstance and a vile man’s greed.

On a whim—a powerful, fateful whim—I sent a sample for a more… specific comparison. I told myself it was to rule out the impossible.

When the results came, the paper felt hot in my hands. A match. A 99.99% certainty. I remember the shock, a cold wave that left me numb. Then, the old memory surfaced, clear as yesterday: a laughing conversation with old Mr. Bernard, a glass of brandy in hand. If we have a son and you have a daughter, he’d joked, we shall bind them together! A throwaway line between friends. Now, it felt like a prophecy etched in stone.

The Bernards had contacted me directly in their search. “Donovan,” he’d said, his voice gravel with grief, “we have been friends for decades. If you hear anything, know anything… you must tell us. And if by chance you ever cross paths with our girl… please, look after her.”

I held that knowledge for over half a year. I wrestled with it every day. To tell them was to unleash a whirlwind on Gemma, who was already so fragile. To not tell was a betrayal of an old friend’s trust. I delayed. I prevaricated. I told myself I was protecting her.

“Why won’t you speak, Grandpa?”

Cassian’s voice, crackling through the line, snaps me back to the heavy silence of my study. The confession is ash in my mouth. The truth is, I have no good answer. Only the tangled, selfish reasons of an old man who saw a pawn and a promise, and hesitated at the board.

Cassian's POV 

The phone feels heavy in my hand, a cold, sleek weight. Donovan’s silence on the other end is a vast, infuriating void. He’s retreated into it, the way he always does when cornered by a truth he’d rather not face.

“Why won’t I speak?” My own voice surprises me, sharp and hot, breaking the dead air in the villa’s quiet living room. “You tell me! Back then, you saw how I treated Gemma. If I had told the Bernards who she was, they would have swooped in, taken her abroad, and forced a divorce immediately!” The words are acid, burning my throat. They taste like the truth I’ve been avoiding.

He’d hoped, he says, his voice finally returning, thin with defensiveness, that our relationship would stabilize. He thought he was buying time for a happy ending. He didn’t know it would never stabilize. That it would rot from the inside out until divorce was the only thing left. He says he regrets it now, and the raw regret in his tone is the only thing that keeps my anger from boiling over.

The loneliness in her question is profound. It’s a fortress she’s built brick by painful brick.

“Gemma,” I say, choosing my words with care. “Even if you are strong enough to stand alone… they are still your blood. They didn’t abandon you on purpose. They’ve been searching.” I take a breath, knowing my next words are a necessary wound. “I apologize. For everything I did. I don’t want you to reject a family’s kindness because of a scumbag like me.” The label fits. It’s the truth of what I was. “Their feelings for you are genuine. I could see it in Meredith’s eyes. It’s not an act.”

She takes a small sip of the milk, then places the glass back on the table with a definitive click. “This has nothing to do with you,” she states, and her tone isn’t cruel, just final.

She’s right. The choice is hers alone. She just doesn’t know what she wants yet. She needs time to let the seismic shock settle.

“That’s for the best,” I agree, standing up. “Get some rest. I’ll take you to meet the client tomorrow.”

I leave her in the quiet darkness. I don’t know when she finally sleeps, but when I pass her door late in the night, the deep, even silence suggests a surprising peace.

The next morning, I’m in the unfamiliar kitchen before dawn. I burn the first batch of oatmeal, the scent of char faint in the air. I scrape the worst of it into one bowl and carefully ladle the clean portion from the top into another. I manage an omelet, simple and plain.

When she comes downstairs, I’m just setting the juice on the table. She looks at the two bowls. Her eyes linger on the one with the darkened crust at the bottom.

Without a word, I place that bowl in front of myself and slide the clean, perfect one toward her. “You eat this one…”