Chapter 1741:


    “Is that her child?” he asked, thrown off.


    “Yes. I was only watching her thest time you saw us,” Christina told him inly.


    Santos studied her for a long moment. “You’re one of the Joneses, aren’t you?”


    “That’s right,” Christina said, her tone perfectlyposed.


    Santos’s brow furrowed into a deep frown. “Then what are you doing here?”


    He had to wonder whether she had any real grasp of how deeply the two families despised one another.


    “I’ll get straight to the point,” Christina said, her expression hardening. “Alban had a one-night stand with a woman at the recent charity event and then disappeared without a word. I’m here to make sure he answers for that.”


    Colette, who had been in the middle of a sip of coffee, choked and sprayed it across the table. She stared at Christina as though she’d just announced something utterly inconceivable.


    “Are you telling me my son slept with someone from the Jones family?”


    “In a manner of speaking,” Christina began, about to rify that the woman in question was her employee — but the entire room erupted at once.


    “Impossible!”


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    The two families had been rivals for as long as anyone could remember, locked in a rivalry built on mutual distrust and a stubborn refusal to yield an inch. The idea that Alban would willingly get involved with a Jones was, to all of them, simply unthinkable. Unless, of course, he hadn’t known who she was at the time.


    Every person in the room turned and fixed their gaze on Christina.


    “Just how are you connected to this?” Colette pressed, still struggling to make sense of it. “Don’t tell me — are you the woman my son slept with?”


    “No,” Christina said, gesturing toward Gillian with quiet precision. “She is the one Alban wronged. The question you should be asking is how you intend to make this right.”


    Gillian nced up briefly, then dropped her gaze back to the floor. She was trembling inside and held Adide even closer, as though the child could shield her from the weight of every set of eyes in the room. The urge to simply turn and walk out was almost overwhelming. She had never felt more out of ce in her life — and never more aware of how safe she felt whenever she was within the walls of the Jones household. She wished, not for the first time, that she could simply spend the rest of her days working quietly for that family and nothing more.


    Alban’s parents studied Gillian in silence, their eyes eventually settling on the small child in her arms. The longer they looked, the more they saw something familiar in the girl’s face — brief, fleeting shes of Alban, even though she took mostly after her mother. The same thought crossed both their minds at once. They exchanged a swift nce, each reading the other perfectly, though neither was willing to say it aloud.


    It didn’t add up. Alban and Gillian had shared only a single night at the charity event — the child appeared far too old for that timeline. And beyond that, there was the matter they never spoke of openly: Alban’s condition. The doctors had been unambiguous. The chances of him fathering a child were almost nonexistent.


    Christina settled into her seat with an air of ease that was entirely deliberate. “The Martel family has a reputation to uphold. I trust you wouldn’t consider walking away from your responsibilities.”


    “Are you saying Alban has to marry her?” Santos asked, his eyes fixed on Christina, hard and skeptical.


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