The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 333

Chapter 333 All the ash we leave behind

Kyle’s POV

The cigarette burned between my fingers. Everything the doctors had told me about preserving what remained of my failing lungs was gone. I stood on the narrow balcony attached to my private room, watching the smoke dissipate into the cold night air above Manhattan. Each drag felt like swallowing broken glass, but the familiar burn grounded me in a way that all their medications couldn’t.

The city stretched below me, a grid of illuminated windows where millions of people were living their uncomplicated lives. Eating dinner. Watching television. Tucking their children into bed without wondering if they’d be alive to see them wake up.

I pressed my free hand against the metal railing, feeling the cold seep through my palm.

Three floors below, I could see the emergency room entrance where ambulances arrived with their cargo of broken humanity. The red and blue lights painted shadows against the hospital’s concrete facade, a light show of crisis and intervention. I’d been brought through those same doors four years ago, bleeding from a bullet wound that should have killed me. Sometimes I wondered if dying then would have been cleaner. Less complicated.

I brought it to my lips again, inhaling smoke that tasted of tar and poor decisions.

Behind me, through the glass door, I could hear the steady beeping of the machines they’d reconnected after Mia left. Heart monitor. Oxygen saturation. IV drip. A mechanical orchestra playing the soundtrack to my decline. The nurse had been professional but firm about my need for constant monitoring. As if knowing the exact rate of my deterioration would somehow slow it down.

Mia’s tears were still burning behind my eyes. I’d spent four years trying to spare her that pain, and in the end, I’d only made it worse.

I flicked ash into the wind and watched it scatter across the hospital’s manicured gardens. Everything I touched turned to ash eventually.

The balcony door slid open behind me with a whisper of displaced air. I didn’t turn around. Only one person had clearance to reach me at this hour, and Morton’s heavy footsteps were as familiar as my own heartbeat.

“You don’t want to live anymore.”

His voice carried the weight of an accusation and a question. I took another drag from the cigarette, letting the smoke burn down my throat before answering. (1

“Maybe.”

Morton moved to stand beside me at the railing.

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“Sophie Field brought news,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “The collaboration exceeded her expectations. She’s very satisfied with your work.”

I stubbed out the cigarette against the metal railing, watching the ember die against the cold steel. “I

know.”

“Taylor won’t be seeing daylight for the next thirty years, assuming she lives that long. Prison isn’t kind to people who prey on children.”

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The knowledge should have brought some satisfaction.

“The field is clear,” Morton continued, his business–speak betraying the emotion he was trying to

contain. “Your family is safe.”

Family. The word sat strange in my mouth. Were they still my family if I was going to leave them? If I’d already been gone for four years? Alexander and Ethan had grown from helpless infants to walking, talking people in my absence. They had personalities now, preferences, fears. They were whole human beings who existed in a world where their father was already dead.

“Kyle.” Morton’s voice had lost its professional polish. “There are treatment options. Experimental therapies. I’ve spoken to specialists in Berlin, Tokyo, Houston. We can have you on a plane within hours.”

I pulled out another cigarette, my hands moving through the familiar ritual. Flick the lighter. Inhale. Feel the burn. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“This isn’t giving up. This is accepting reality.”

Morton’s reflection in the window showed a man struggling not to cry. His hands were clenched at his sides, his jaw tight with the effort of maintaining composure. We’d known each other since college, survived business ventures and personal disasters together.

“The reality is that I’m dying,” I said, lighting the fresh cigarette.

The flame from the lighter illuminated Morton’s face for a moment, highlighting the lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there when we were young and believed we could solve any problem with enough money and determination. He’d aged in the years since I’d been sick, carrying the weight of my secrets along with his own.

“Your children need you.”

Behind my eyelids, I could see Alexander’s gap–toothed grin from the photographs Morton brought me. Ethan’s serious expression as he built elaborate structures with wooden blocks. Their faces, so much like mine, growing and changing without me.

“That’s not your choice to make.”

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Mia had said the same thing, her voice breaking with fury and grief. Both of them were right. I’d been making choices for other people my entire life, convinced that I knew better.

Morton pulled out his phone, the screen’s glow harsh against his face. “I have five different oncologists willing to consult. Three immunology specialists. A research facility in Switzerland that’s developed promising protocols for autoimmune cascade disorders.”

“Morton.” My voice carried an edge of finality that made him pause. “Stop.”

He lowered the phone, his shoulders sagging in defeat.

“I can’t lose you too.”

I reached out and gripped his shoulder, feeling the tension in his muscles beneath the expensive fabric of his suit. “You’re not losing me. I’m just… finishing what I started.”

“What you started was a family.”

A family. Two children who barely knew my voice. A woman who’d loved me completely until I’d taught her not to.

I dropped my hand and took another drag from the cigarette. The nicotine made my head spin, or maybe that was the medication.

“They’re better off without me.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

Morton’s composure finally cracked. His eyes filled with tears that he didn’t try to hide.

“They’ll understand when they’re older.”

“They’ll understand that their father chose to abandon them. ”

I turned to face Morton directly, seeing my own pain reflected in his eyes. I finished the cigarette and flicked the butt into the darkness beyond the balcony. The city continued its indifferent sprawl below us, millions of lights marking millions of lives that would continue long after I was gone.

“Sophie Field wants to meet with you tomorrow,” Morton said, his voice returning to something approaching professionalism. “To thank you personally for what you did. The real Sophie, I mean.”

I nodded absently.

I walked back toward the glass door, feeling the weight of exhaustion settling into my bones.

“I need to rest.”

Morton followed me back into the room, where the machines resumed their electronic monitoring of

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my decline. The numbers on the screens told a story of systemic failure: low oxygen saturation, elevated white blood cell count, irregular heart rhythm. My body was a company in bankruptcy, liquidating assets to stay operational for a few more days or weeks.

“Where will you go?” Morton asked as I settled back into the chair by the window.

The question assumed I was leaving, and maybe I was. The hospital had become a prison of false hope and medical interventions that delayed the inevitable without changing the outcome. The doctors meant well, but they couldn’t cure what was fundamentally broken about me.

“I don’t know yet.”

Morton walked to the dresser where someone had placed a small bouquet of flowers–lilies, their white petals already beginning to brown at the edges. He touched one of the stems absently, his mind clearly elsewhere.

“The children’s school has a winter concert next week,” he said without looking at me.

“I’ll think about it.”

Morton nodded, accepting the non–commitment as the most he was likely to get. He gathered his coat from the chair where he’d draped it, the expensive wool still carrying the scent of the cologne he wore and the city air outside.

“Kyle.” He paused at the door, his hand on the handle. “Whatever you decide, you should know that I’ve never met anyone who loved his children more than you do. Even if your way of showing it has been… unconventional.”

After he left, I sat alone with the machines and the city lights.

I deserve it.

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