"You hired my wife to carry your baby. You destroyed my marriage. You got what you paid for. Now it's your responsibility to deal with the consequences."
There was a pause, and I could practically hear him trying to figure out how to spin this in his favor. "But Grant, you're still part of this family. We're all connected now through this beautiful child. We need to work together, support each other."
That's when I lost it. Because this rich, entitled piece of garbage who treated my wife like a rental womb was trying to tell me that I was part of his family now. Like his money gave him the right to reorganize my entire life to suit his convenience. "Listen to me very carefully, Charles," I said, my voice getting deadly quiet.
"We are not family. We are not connected. We are not anything. You wanted a baby, you got one."
"You hired my wife's body and destroyed my marriage in the process. But here's the thing that makes this your problem, not mine." "Grant, I don't think you understand." "No, I understand perfectly."
"You thought you could buy your way into parenthood without dealing with any of the messy parts? Well, congratulations. Those messy parts include middle-of-the-night feedings, diaper changes, and a woman who's probably realizing that being a surrogate isn't quite the glamorous experience she thought it would be. But that's your mess to clean up, not mine."
"But Melissa needs—" "Melissa needed to think about what she was doing before she did it," I interrupted. "She needed to consider how this would affect her actual family before she agreed to carry your baby. She needed to listen to her husband when he told her this was a terrible idea."
"But she didn't do any of those things, did she?" The line went quiet, and for a moment, I thought maybe I'd actually gotten through to him. Maybe he was starting to understand that his money couldn't buy him absolution from the chaos he'd helped create. But then he came back with that same smooth, condescending tone.
"Grant, I think you're being unreasonable. This is about more than just you and Melissa. There's a child involved now." "Your child," I said, cutting him off again.