The Billionaire Ex-Wife and the Beggar He Became novel Chapter 9

Zane was the child Winona and Julian adopted.

It happened when Winona first learned she was pregnant. She was on her way to a prenatal checkup alone, passing by a large dumpster when she heard the faintest sound—a baby's cry. It was so soft it was almost impossible to detect, but it tugged at her heart.

Winona approached and found an infant, abandoned and burning with fever.

Without a second thought, she gathered the baby into her arms and rushed him to the hospital for a full examination.

The diagnosis was devastating. The high fever, left untreated for too long, had caused permanent damage. The child was deaf, and would never speak.

What kind of parents could be so heartless? To toss away their own child—leaving him to a fever that stole his future?

In that tiny, deaf child, Winona saw her own reflection. She, abandoned by her parents and frozen out by Julian, recognized a kindred spirit. They were two souls, bound by the same cruel fate of being thrown away.

She simply couldn't abandon him.

When she brought it up with Julian, his answer was exactly what she expected: he wanted nothing to do with the child.

The man who refused to accept his own flesh and blood wasn't about to welcome a stranger's abandoned child.

"I'll give him my name. I'll raise him myself!" Winona, usually so obedient to Julian, was uncharacteristically resolute. She wouldn't back down. She was going to adopt this child, no matter what.

In the end, perhaps out of concern for the Nicholson family's reputation, Julian agreed to give the boy the family surname—Nicholson. They named him Zane Nicholson.

But that was all. Zane was a Nicholson in name only; he was never permitted to enter Nicholson Manor, and the entire family kept him firmly at a distance.

Even Tiana, the so-called little sister, disliked Zane. Despite how Zane watched over her, always prioritizing her and cherishing her as a sister, Tiana refused to see him as family. His devotion meant nothing to her.

Only Winona truly cared for Zane.

From the moment she learned he was deaf, she never gave up hope. She chased every treatment, tried every therapy. Now, after years of effort, after a string of new hearing aids and, finally, a cochlear implant, Zane had made remarkable progress. With over a year of speech therapy, he spoke and understood just like any other child.

"Mom, why are you crying?" He reached up on his toes, his small hand surprisingly soft as he carefully wiped her tears.

She remembered being sixteen—that tender age when a girl should feel most secure, most loved. Instead, she, like Zane, had been cast out. Her own family had shut the door on her forever.

"It's alright," she whispered, hugging Zane tighter. "Mom loves you. You are always my treasure. We'll go to a home just for the two of us, and from now on, I'll be your mom, and only yours. Does that sound good?"

Zane's face brightened. "Yes!"

Winona drove them both to the small apartment she rented. Only then did she turn her phone back on.

It rang immediately.

She assumed it would be Shera or someone else from the Nicholson family—calls she had no desire to answer. But Zane saw the name and cried out with excitement, "Mom, it's Aunt Mia!"

Though Zane was born deaf, he was remarkably bright. Barely over five years old, he already recognized many words. He knew the letters "Mia" on his mother's phone.

Winona had met Mia Summers when she was ten. Back then, Mia was eighteen, dating Winona's older brother, who was also eighteen at the time.