How a Dying Woman Rewrote Her Epilogue

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It felt as if he'd been gutted, left with nothing but an empty shell.

A long, heavy silence settled between them.

Lucinda was the first to break it. "Can we talk?"

Jarrod's eyes were icy. "Go ahead."

Lucinda led him to a quiet alcove, then looked up at him. "Your grandmother's worried sick-she's been calling, but you didn't pick up. I managed to calm her down and keep her from coming over to make a scene."

After all, it was supposed to be a birthday celebration.

Not that it hadn't already descended into chaos.

"How's Elodie doing now?" Lucinda glanced toward the patient rooms, her expression conflicted.

She'd never really approved of Elodie before, but she'd never imagined someone so young would fall seriously ill.

pain's under control for now." Jarrod pinched the

diagnosis? Uterine cancer? How serious is it? What did the doctors

The prognosis is

next question left her lips before

Jarrod turned to

a faint, mocking smile. "What do you

about his tone

to never have children? And especially not by choice-because you're forced into it. You're at the helm of the Silverstein Group, with the second branch of the family circling like vultures. If you don't have an heir, it's a

few

so for a

pragmatic-pointing out a

she couldn't accept Jarrod throwing everything away for

house will suffer, I can offer you a solution," Jarrod said, his voice cold and flat. "You can leave the Silverstein family now, go back to the Howards. Who knows, maybe you'll end up with a

flushed

for her, and maybe that's true-for a while. But ten years from now, twenty years from now, you'll change. You'll start to resent her and regret the choices you made today. That's human nature. Love only lasts for the moment-it's not enough to sustain you for a lifetime. It's

when regret comes, what

stability, comfort, and security. Without that, it's just