His Dead Wife Was Raising Their Daughter

CHAPTER 2 - Two Death Certificates

Victor entered the greenhouse with the confidence of a man accustomed to being obeyed.

He was sixty, wealthy, and still treated his twenty-seven-year-old daughter like a frightened teenager.

"Take Lily home," he ordered Emma.

Alexander stepped between them.

"You told me she was dead."

Victor did not deny it.

"You were an unemployed young man with no family name and no future."

"I was her husband."

"A secret courthouse ceremony does not make a stable marriage."

Emma stared at her father.

"You told me Alexander died in a construction accident."

Victor claimed he had protected them from a reckless decision. He said Alexander would eventually have abandoned Emma and the child.

Then Alexander produced Emma's death certificate.

Emma retrieved a document from her office.

It was Alexander's.

Both certificates carried the signature of the same private physician.

Victor had declared each of them dead to the other.

When Alexander failed to return, Emma believed she had been widowed. Victor pressured her to place Lily for adoption, but she refused. After Lily was born, Emma left the family estate and supported them by working in the greenhouse.

"I wrote to your mother," Emma told Alexander. "Every letter came back unopened."

"My mother moved after your funeral. She still believes you died."

Alexander approached Lily carefully.

"I will not ask you to believe I'm your father today. But I would like the chance to prove it."

Lily looked at Emma before taking his hand.

Victor became furious.

"This child belongs to my family."

Emma's fear disappeared.

"She belongs to herself."

Victor warned that the greenhouse stood on land owned by his company. If Emma continued speaking with Alexander, he would cancel the lease and make certain no employer in the city hired her.

Alexander quietly activated the recorder on his phone.

"Are you threatening your daughter because she discovered what you did?"

Victor smiled coldly.

"I am reminding her who has protected her."

A woman's voice came from the greenhouse entrance.

"No, Victor. You are reminding us who we feared."

Emma's mother, Helen, stood there holding an old wooden box.

Inside were seven years of letters that Victor had never allowed either family to receive.