Chapter 257: I’m Your Husband

"Who’s there?"

Reid’s voice cut through the quiet room—deep, gravelly, and instantly sharp with a protective, dangerous edge. He spun around in an instant, stepping directly between me and the crib, his grey eyes narrowing into lethal slits as his Alpha aura flared in warning to protect his daughter.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t.

I just stood there in the soft light of the doorway, my chest heaving, my heart racing so hard I thought it would burst right through my ribs. Hot tears finally spilled over my lashes, tracking down my cheeks as I looked at the man I had died leaving behind. He looked so tired. The sharp, cocky glint in his eyes was gone, replaced by a hollow, haunting shadow that broke my soul into a thousand pieces.

Reid stared at me, his brow furrowing in deep confusion and growing irritation as he took in my face, my dark suit, and the tears streaming down my cheeks. To him, I was just an intruder—the unknown Samson heir who had somehow wandered into his private wing.

"You’re in the wrong place," Reid growled low in his throat, his voice cold enough to freeze water. "Get out before I—"

"The day #14 was raised..." I spoke up, my voice trembling, cracked with eight months of buried agony, yet echoing with a cadence he knew better than his own name. "...and we said our final goodbye... did you hate me for it?"

Reid froze.

The color drained from his face so fast it was as if all the blood had been violently sucked out of his body. His dark grey eyes blew wide, fixed on my face in absolute, paralyzed horror. His chest stopped moving altogether, his mouth parting slightly as the words hung in the quiet, scented air between us.

The banner. The final, private farewell no one in the world knew about except the two of us.

"What...?" Reid rasped out, his voice fracturing down the middle, a desperate, terrifying tremor shaking his massive frame as he took one slow, disbelieving step toward me. "What did you just say?"

Slowly, he took a step forward out of the shadows, his eyes searching my face with a desperate, terrifying hunger, begging whatever cruel trick of the light was happening to yield the face he saw in his dreams every single night. He moved like a man walking through a dream, reaching out toward the impossible promise of those words.

Then, I took a small step out of the doorway, stepping fully into the pale pool of moonlight spilling through the window.

The moment the light hit me, the fragile thread of hope snapped.

The glint of pale, striking silver hair caught the moonlight. The smooth skin, the subtle shift in eye color—it wasn’t the pretty, sun-kissed face of Kain Evans, the hockey captain who had taken hits against the ice and worn his scars like armor. It was the flawless, ethereal face of Kain Samson, the multi-billionaire heir who had spent his life tucked away from the world.

Reid stopped dead in his tracks. I watched the tiny spark of light in his grey eyes shatter into a million jagged pieces, replaced instantly by a dark, suffocating wave of pure betrayal and raw, unadulterated pain. His fists clenched so tightly at his sides that the knuckles turned stark white.

My chest ached with a crushing weight, but I forced my trembling legs to stand firm. Slowly, deliberately, I raised my right hand between us, holding it out in the space between our bodies as if expecting a polite, formal handshake.

"Hello," I whispered, my voice thick with unshed tears, trembling as I held his devastated gaze. "I’m Kain Samson... but I’m also your husband. Your Kain."

Silence descended over the room, so absolute and heavy that the soft, rhythmic breathing of our daughter in her crib sounded like a roar.

Reid stared at my outstretched hand, then slowly lifted his gaze back to my face. The initial shock bled away, giving rise to a deep, dangerous line between his brows. His chest heaved with a sharp, ragged breath as his features twisted into a cold, lethal scowl.

"Is this a joke?" Reid asked softly.

His voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t angry. It was flat, hollow, and laced with a deadly, quiet poison that cut straight through my ribs and shredded my heart into ribbons.

"Did my mother pay you?" he continued, taking a menacing step toward me, his frozen pine scent flaring with a sudden, bitter aggression that made the frozen pine taste like ash. "Did someone hire you to come up here, read a tabloid article about my dead husband, and mock my family? Because if this is a sick game, you have three seconds to get out of this wing before I break you."

The cold detachment in his eyes broke my heart into a thousand pieces. I felt the sharp sting of fresh tears spilling over my lashes, tracking down my cheeks as my hand hovered uselessly in the air between us.

I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t blame him for a single second.

To Reid, I was a stranger wearing an expensive suit, standing in his private sanctuary, spouting words that belonged to a ghost while looking like a completely different man. If someone had walked up to me eight months ago looking like a stranger and claiming to be Reid, I would have thrown them through a wall.

"It’s not a joke, rookie," I choked out, lowering my hand slowly, forcing my voice to hold steady through the ache in my throat. "I know how impossible this sounds. I know I don’t look like him. But I swear on Sarah’s life... it’s me."

"Don’t you dare swear on my daughter’s life!" Reid roared, his voice cracking with a terrifying, raw rage that rattled the glass panes of the window.

In a fraction of a second, he closed the distance between us. His massive hand shot out, grabbing me hard by the lapels of my suit jacket and slamming me back against the wall beside the door.

The impact knocked the breath straight out of my lungs, but I didn’t fight back. I didn’t even flinch. I just stood there, pinned under his overwhelming weight, letting his frantic, furious Alpha aura slam into me like a physical wave.

"Are you out of your mind?!" Reid spat, his face inches from mine, his dark grey eyes completely bloodshot and manic with pure, unadulterated devastation. "You don’t get to stand in my house, talking about being my husband and swearing on my child! Who the fuck gave you that right?! And how did you know about what happened on that day of the banner raise? Who told you?!"