Chapter 2 - THE MESSAGE LUCA NEVER RECEIVED
I gripped the phone so tightly my fingers hurt.
“What did you just say?”
Victor exhaled.
“He never knew you came to the office.”
The room seemed to tilt.
I was standing in my kitchen while Leo and Mila built a crooked tower from magnetic tiles in the living room.
Six years disappeared in one sentence.
I was twenty-nine again.
Seven weeks pregnant.
Terrified.
Still wearing my wedding ring on a chain beneath my sweater because I had not yet found the courage to take it off completely.
I had gone to Moretti Global with an ultrasound photo in my purse and a speech I had rehearsed all morning.
I never made it past the executive floor lobby.
Victor had met me near the elevators.
He told me Luca was in a critical acquisition meeting.
He said Luca did not want to be disturbed.
I had believed him because Victor had worked beside Luca for years.
I had trusted him.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Not on the phone.”
“You called me.”
“I know.”
“Then answer me.”
Victor went quiet again.
I could hear traffic behind him.
“Nia, I made decisions back then that I thought were protecting Luca.”
A laugh escaped me, sharp and humorless.
“Protecting him from what?”
“From you.”
My stomach turned.
I walked farther from the living room.
“Say that again.”
“You have every right to hate me.”
“I don't even know what you did yet.”
“That is why we need to meet.”
“No.”
“Nia.”
“No more closed rooms and vague warnings.”
My voice rose.
Leo looked over from the living room.
I forced my tone down.
“You tell me now, or I hang up and call Luca.”
Victor cursed under his breath.
Then he spoke quickly.
“The day you came to the office, Luca was meeting with Daniel Shaw.”
I knew the name.
Everyone in Chicago finance did.
Daniel Shaw was Evelyn's father.
At the time, he had been the chairman of Shaw Capital, the lender who financed Moretti Global's first major international expansion.
Victor continued.
“The acquisition was fragile.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because Daniel had made it clear that Luca's personal instability was becoming a concern.”
“My divorce was a concern to a lender?”
“Your divorce, the fertility rumors, the press, everything.”
My skin prickled.
“What fertility rumors?”
Victor stopped talking.
I already knew I would hate the answer.
“Victor.”
“Daniel had heard that you and Luca were separating because you couldn't have children.”
“From who?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I swear I don't know who started it.”
“But you knew it was being said.”
“Yes.”
“And you let me walk through your lobby pregnant while people upstairs discussed me like a defective asset.”
“It wasn't like that.”
“It was exactly like that.”
My chest felt tight.
I remembered Victor's expression that day.
Not cold.
Worried.
He had looked at my hand resting over my purse and asked why I needed to see Luca.
I had refused to tell him.
Then I had made my fatal mistake.
I had handed him an envelope.
“Did you give Luca my letter?”
Silence.
My knees weakened.
“Victor.”
“No.”
One word.
Six years of consequences.
I sat at the kitchen table.
“Where is it?”
“I destroyed it.”
I could not speak.
“I thought you were going to pull him back into the marriage while he was trying to close the biggest deal of his career.”
“You destroyed my letter.”
“I did.”
“The letter where I told him I was pregnant.”
“I did not know that was what it said.”
“You didn't read it?”
“No.”
“Then how could you possibly decide it didn't matter?”
“I was wrong.”
Wrong was a missed turn.
Wrong was ordering the wrong wine.
Wrong was not stealing six years from two children.
I stood so abruptly the chair hit the wall.
Mila called from the living room.
“Mom?”
“I'm okay, sweetheart.”
I was not okay.
Victor spoke softly.
“There is more.”
Of course there was.
There was always more when powerful people said they had been trying to protect someone.
“What?”
“Two weeks after that, I received an email from an address with your name.”
My blood went cold.
“What email?”
“It said you had reconsidered contacting Luca.”
“I never sent that.”
“I know that now.”
“What did it say?”
“That you did not want him involved in whatever came next.”
My free hand pressed against the table.
“Whatever came next.”
“That was the phrase.”
“And you never thought that was strange?”
“I thought you wanted a clean break.”
“Convenient.”
“Nia, please.”
“Who had access to your email?”
“My assistant, IT, senior staff.”
“Who had access to mine?”
“I don't know.”
I did.
At least, I knew who might have.
During the divorce, my old email account had remained tied to several shared services in the penthouse.
Luca's household manager had helped separate them.
So had his private technology team.
And so had Victor.
“You need to send me everything you have.”
“I no longer work for Luca.”
“I know.”
He had left Moretti Global three years earlier with no public explanation.
At the time, business reporters called it an amicable transition.
Nothing about Victor's voice sounded amicable now.
“I kept one thing,” he said.
My heart kicked.
“What?”
“A printed copy of that email.”
“Why?”
“Because by then I had started to think something was wrong.”
“By then?”
“Daniel Shaw's people knew too much about Luca's private schedule.”
I stared through the kitchen window at bare branches moving in the wind.
“Are you telling me Evelyn's father was spying on Luca?”
“I am telling you I do not know how far it went.”
I thought of Evelyn standing in the restaurant.
Her stunned face had looked real.
I did not want to drag her into a conspiracy because of her last name.
“Does Luca know any of this?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was a coward.”
At least that answer sounded honest.
“And because when I finally tried to tell him, Daniel threatened to expose a separate issue that would have triggered a federal investigation into Moretti Global.”
“What issue?”
“Not on the phone.”
I nearly screamed.
Victor gave me an address in River North and told me he would be there at six.
Then he hung up.
I sat in silence for almost a minute.
Leo appeared beside me.
“Are you sad?”
I looked at my son and saw Luca so clearly that it hurt.
“A little.”
“Because of the restaurant man?”
I pulled him into my arms.
“Yes.”
“Is he your old friend?”
I closed my eyes.
“He used to be more than that.”
Leo considered this with serious six-year-old concentration.
“Like Uncle Marcus?”
I almost smiled.
“No.”
Marcus Reed was my best friend from college, not an uncle by blood, but the twins had known him their whole lives.
“Different.”
Mila ran into the kitchen carrying the drawing from lunch, which she had apparently stuffed into her coat pocket.
She spread it across the table.
It showed four people holding hands beneath a giant purple sun.
“That's us,” she announced.
I pointed to the fourth figure.
“Who's that?”
She shrugged.
“The man from lunch.”
My throat tightened.
“You don't know him.”
“He looked lonely.”
Children were mercilessly perceptive.
At five-thirty, Marcus arrived to stay with the twins.
He took one look at my face and stopped joking.
“What happened?”
“Luca found us.”
Marcus went still.
He had known this day might come.
He had helped me build a life around the possibility.
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not exactly.”
“That's not an answer.”
“He wants a paternity test.”
Marcus's jaw tightened.
“He'll get one.”
“I know.”
“And then?”
I picked up my coat.
“Then we find out whether the last six years were built on my silence or somebody else's lie.”
I told Marcus about Victor.
By the time I finished, he looked ready to drive to River North himself.
“You're not meeting him alone.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No.”
“Marcus.”
“You have two children upstairs and a billionaire ex-husband sending lawyers to your house three hours after seeing them.”
“That is exactly why I need to know what Victor has.”
Marcus stared at me.
“If you are not back by eight, I call you.”
“Fine.”
“If you do not answer, I call the police.”
“Fine.”
“And Luca.”
I gave him a look.
“That would get your attention.”
I left before I could argue.
Victor's address led to a private office above an architectural firm.
He was waiting inside a conference room with the blinds closed.
He had aged since I last saw him.
There was more gray in his hair and less certainty in his posture.
On the table sat a manila folder.
I did not sit.
“Show me.”
Victor opened the folder.
The first page was the fake email.
The sender line showed my old address.
The date was six years earlier.
The words were brief.
I have reconsidered.
Please do not tell Luca I came by.
I do not want him involved in what comes next.
He has made his choice, and I have made mine.
Nia.
I stared at the page until the letters blurred.
“I never wrote this.”
“I believe you.”
“You should have believed me then.”
“I know.”
He turned over another sheet.
It was a calendar printout from Luca's executive office.
My visit had been deleted from the log.
“Who deleted it?”
“I did.”
I looked at him.
Victor did not defend himself.
“I thought I was cleaning up a personal interruption.”
“Stop calling my life an interruption.”
He flinched.
Then he reached for a smaller envelope.
“This is why I called today.”
Inside was a photograph.
It showed Daniel Shaw and a man I recognized as one of Luca's former security contractors entering a hotel in New York.
The date stamp was four days after my office visit.
“What am I looking at?”
“The security contractor had access to Luca's household systems, including shared email migration during your divorce.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“You think Daniel had him fake the email.”
“I think Daniel had enough motive to keep you away from Luca until the financing closed.”
“Why would my pregnancy matter to his financing?”
Victor's expression changed.
“Because Daniel did not just want the deal.”
He wanted something else.
I knew before Victor said it.
“Evelyn.”
Victor nodded.
“Daniel had been positioning Evelyn near Luca for months.”
I felt sick.
“They didn't even start dating until two years later.”
“That is what I thought too.”
Victor slid one final page toward me.
It was a copy of an old internal memo from Shaw Capital.
At the top, handwritten beside Luca's name, were four words.
Personal alignment remains achievable.
Below it was a list of upcoming social events.
Evelyn's name appeared beside three of them.
I sat down at last.
“This proves nothing.”
“No.”
Victor's face looked grim.
“But the original is still somewhere inside Shaw Capital's archived deal files.”
“And if Luca sees it?”
“He will destroy Daniel.”
I almost said good.
Then Victor's phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen and went pale.
“What?”
He turned the phone toward me.
A news alert had appeared from a Chicago financial gossip site.
BILLIONAIRE LUCA MORETTI IN SECRET PATERNITY DRAMA AFTER LUNCH CONFRONTATION.
Below the headline was a photograph taken less than five hours earlier.
It showed Luca standing beside our restaurant table.
Leo and Mila's faces were clearly visible.
I stopped breathing.
The article had already named me.
May you like
It had also named my children.
And at the bottom of the page, an anonymous source claimed I had hidden Luca's twins for six years in an attempt to secure a massive payout.
