?Chapter 3109:


    “A child… a child…” Ernest’s face drained of color, his lips moving in a hollow, automatic repetition, as though the words themselves were strangers to him.


    “Elissa!” Savannah’s nerves snapped like a taut wire, her voice slicing through the air with urgentmand. “What are you waiting for? Get him out of here—immediately!”


    “Yes, ma’am!” The guards seized Ernest roughly and began hauling him away.


    “Let me go!” Suddenly, a spark ignited in Ernest’s foggy mind. The sentence pounded relentlessly, echoing inside him—she had a child… A child!


    With a sudden burst of strength, he tore himself free from their grasp and lunged toward Elissa, his voice raw and desperate as he gasped out the words. “A child? You mean… a child?”


    ???????? ?????????????? ?????????????????????????? ???? ??????????????????.??????


    Elissa barely nodded, fragile and pale. Before she could speak, Savannah yanked her backward with iron resolve. “That’s enough! Come with me, Elissa! Listen to what I say!”


    Turning sharply, Savannah red at the guards, fury zing in her eyes. “Can’t any of you control this properly? How many times must he break free before you can throw him out?”


    The guards exchanged uneasy looks. Ernest’s obsession with Elissa was obvious, clouding their judgment.


    That hesitation was all it took.


    At Savannah’s sharp order, one guard stepped swiftly behind Ernest and mmed a fierce kick into the back of his knee.


    “Ugh!” Ernest groaned, teeth clenched, copsing heavily onto the gravel. His kneecaps mmed against the gravel path, producing a harsh, sickening crack.


    Ernest jerked his head upward abruptly. He showed no anger—but the quiet intensity in his eyes sent a jolt through Savannah’s heart.


    “You!” she snarled, waving him away. “Leave now, or this will only get worse—”


    “Mrs. Brown!” Ernest’s mind spun wildly, her words washing over him like distant thunder. His gaze locked on hers. “A child? She means… the one from before?”


    An oppressive silence swallowed the garden.


    Ernest chuckled—a short, hollow sound mingling disbelief and dawning truth.


    His eyes moved to Elissa’s pale, motionless face, and for a long moment, no words came. How could he have imagined otherwise?


    That child—the one lost beneath the waves with Elissa! Back then, still cradled within her womb, fragile and not yet fully formed.


    Even before he found Elissa, Ernest had resigned himself to its loss.


    After the car crash, the unforgivable sea, and everything else she might have been through, survival seemed impossible for a fragile fetus.


    Still, he had prayed, hoped against hope that their child might have escaped fate.


    But when his people found Elissa alive yet without any trace of a child around her, that fragile hope had been quietly buried beneath the rubble of reality.


    His beloved had barely clung to life—how could their unborn child have survived? He was already grateful that she was still there, and he couldn’t ask for anything else.


    So when he was with Elissa, Ernest never spoke the words—never dared ask. She remembered nothing; he refused to reopen her wounds and add to her sorrows.


    To him, that lost child existed only in memory—a ghost of what might have been.


    Yet now— now—


    Ernest shut his eyes and let out a soft, tremblingugh, filled with a bittersweet blend of joy and sorrow.


    Joy—because against all odds, their child had lived.


    Sorrow—because their child had endured pain, just as Elissa had.


    .


    .


    .