Chapter 3: $160 Million

Ethan went into the bar and found the owner. One look at her thick, wavy black hair, and he started doubting whether the hotel’s description had been accurate after all.

Sure enough, when he offered to pay her back for the room and deposit, she refused. She denied ever taking him to a hotel and teased him that if she wanted to sleep with him, the bar’s private lounge would do just fine—no need for a hotel. Besides, she said, she liked fresh eighteen-year-olds, not greasy middle-aged men like him.

That left him completely lost. He asked to see the bar’s security footage, but she said the cameras were just for show and refused to indulge such an “unreasonable” request.

Ethan went back to his car, dejected. He looked at the message on his phone again. Did I really text Claire on some subconscious impulse?

He booked another hotel room and looked over the paternity reports again. Then he slapped himself across the face. The sting brought him back to his senses. This was real.

He texted the chief of inpatient medicine to ask for leave. In his current state of mind, treating patients would be a malpractice suit waiting to happen.

Thinking about the unremarkable position he held at the hospital, he was filled with regret and bitterness. He had graduated at the top of his class, earned full privileges within two years of joining the hospital, finished his master’s degree, and made attending physician. He’d had a bright future ahead of him.

Then he met Claire. Head over heels, he married her and started a family. The Lowell family had money and power, and Claire considered his job optional, so she had him focus on the home and the girls. He put his doctoral studies on hold after one year and stopped going after promotions. If not for a stubborn shred of professional pride, he might have taken her advice and quit altogether to become a full-time stay-at-home dad.

And what had it gotten him? His wife had cheated, the daughters weren’t his, and he had been played for a fool. More than a decade of blood, sweat, and tears had been for nothing.

His heart ached. He felt small and useless, and he didn’t want to see anyone.

He holed up in the hotel for several days. Then one night, someone swiped a keycard, the door opened, and Claire walked in.

“Ethan, you won’t come home, you won’t go to work—what are you doing hiding out in a place like this?”

Claire looked around the room. There was no trace of another woman’s scent, and the place was reasonably tidy apart from some leftover takeout on the coffee table, the smell of food still lingering in the air. Her husband was lying on the bed, watching the old Western miniseries Lonesome Dove.