Chapter 6 - PANCAKES WITH A STRANGER
Saturday morning arrived beneath six inches of fresh snow.
I had barely slept.
The latest document had made Evelyn's innocence harder to assume and her guilt harder to prove.
Elliot warned us that the author field could reflect the original owner of a template rather than the person who modified it.
Luca warned me not to reach conclusions.
Serena warned both of us to stop speaking directly about evidence without counsel.
The twins warned me that we were out of whipped cream.
At seven forty-five, I drove to the grocery store in a baseball cap and oversized coat because photographers still lingered near the end of the block.
At eight thirty, Luca arrived alone.
His security car remained where promised, half a block away.
He stood on my porch holding three bags.
I opened the door.
“What is all that?”
“Pancake supplies.”
“You bought three bags of supplies?”
“I was told there were several kinds of flour.”
I stared at him.
“By whom?”
“The internet.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Luca looked almost offended.
“I did research.”
“Clearly.”
Mila ran down the hallway.
“He's here!”
Leo followed more slowly.
Luca stepped inside as if crossing a border.
He had been in my house once before, during the press chaos, but this was different.
This time he was here as their father.
No court had ordered it.
No publicist had staged it.
No photographer was supposed to see it.
He took off his coat and looked unexpectedly ordinary in a dark sweater and jeans.
Mila stared at him.
“You don't look like the pictures.”
“What pictures?”
“The ones on Mom's phone.”
I nearly dropped the mixing bowl.
Luca looked at me.
“I do not keep pictures of you.”
Mila corrected herself.
“On the news.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Leo examined the grocery bags.
“You got almond flour.”
“Yes.”
“We're not making almond pancakes.”
Luca looked at me for help.
I folded my arms.
“You did research.”
For the next twenty minutes, the billionaire chairman of Moretti Global took directions from two six-year-olds and failed to crack an egg without getting shell in the bowl.
It was absurd.
It was painful.
It was also, against my will, funny.
Mila laughed so hard when batter landed on Luca's sleeve that she slid off her stool.
Luca caught her before she hit the floor.
His reaction was instant.
One arm around her waist.
One hand protecting the back of her head.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Mila looked up at him.
“You're fast.”
Luca swallowed.
“I guess I am.”
She touched his cheek with one batter-covered finger.
Now he had a white streak beneath his eye.
Leo laughed.
I turned away because I suddenly could not breathe properly.
These were the moments I had once dreamed of giving them.
Not private jets.
Not trust funds.
A father catching a child before she fell.
A stupid streak of pancake batter.
A Saturday morning that should have happened years ago.
Then Leo asked the question that shattered it.
“Do you have other kids?”
Luca's expression changed.
“No.”
“Why not?”
I stopped stirring.
Luca looked toward me.
I gave him no rescue.
He crouched beside Leo.
“Sometimes adults want things that don't happen when they expect.”
“Did you want kids?”
“Yes.”
“With Mom?”
The kitchen became very quiet.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you leave?”
I closed my eyes.
Luca did not look at me this time.
“Because I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“A very big one.”
Leo frowned.
“Like forgetting someone at school?”
“Bigger.”
“Like crashing a car?”
“Bigger.”
Leo's eyes widened.
“That is really big.”
“Yes.”
Mila climbed back onto her stool.
“Can you fix it?”
Luca looked at me then.
“I don't know.”
The answer hurt because it was the right one.
We ate pancakes at my kitchen table.
Luca cut Mila's into precise squares until she informed him triangles tasted better.
He changed tactics immediately.
Leo asked what his company did.
Luca tried to explain infrastructure investing.
Leo listened for twelve seconds.
“So you buy buildings?”
“Sometimes.”
“That's easier.”
“Yes.”
After breakfast, the twins showed him their rooms.
I followed because I was not ready to leave him alone with them.
Luca did not object.
Mila's room was an explosion of purple, books, and stuffed animals.
Leo's walls were covered with planets.
He pointed at a cardboard solar system hanging from the ceiling.
“Mom made Saturn wrong.”
“I made Saturn at one in the morning.”
“The ring is crooked.”
Luca looked up.
“It is slightly crooked.”
I glared at him.
“Careful.”
He smiled.
A real smile.
It startled me more than anger would have.
For a moment, I saw the twenty-eight-year-old man who used to dance with me in a kitchen too small for both of us.
Then his phone vibrated.
He looked at it and the smile disappeared.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Luca.”
He stepped into the hallway.
I followed.
His security chief had sent a photograph.
A black SUV had circled the block twice.
Its plates were registered to a private company owned by Shaw Capital.
My blood went cold.
“Why would Daniel's people be here?”
“I don't know.”
“You told Evelyn you were coming.”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell her father?”
“No.”
“You know that how?”
“Because she hasn't spoken to him since yesterday.”
“According to her.”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
We moved the twins away from the front windows.
Luca called his security car closer.
The black SUV disappeared before anyone could stop it.
A license plate camera captured the driver.
Luca recognized him.
“Thomas Vale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“He worked for Daniel.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“What did he do?”
Luca looked at me.
“Problems.”
I hated the word.
“What kind of problems?”
“The kind rich men pay not to describe.”
“Wonderful.”
The twins sensed the tension.
Leo asked if Luca was leaving.
Luca looked at me for permission again.
I realized he had done that several times that morning.
He was trying.
I wished trying could restore years.
“Soon,” I said.
Mila's face fell.
Luca crouched beside her.
“I'll come back.”
“When?”
He looked at me.
“Soon.”
Mila pointed at him.
“That's what adults say when they don't know.”
Luca almost laughed.
“Then I will know before I tell you.”
At eleven, his security team escorted him out through the garage.
The black SUV did not return.
For three hours, nothing happened.
The twins spent part of the afternoon comparing Luca to themselves.
Leo stood in front of the hallway mirror and narrowed his eyes.
“Do I really look like him?”
“A little.”
Mila appeared beside him.
“You have his angry eyebrows.”
“I don't have angry eyebrows.”
“You do when you do math.”
Leo turned to me.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
He seemed offended by genetics.
Then he asked something I had avoided for years.
“What is Dad's last name?”
“Moretti.”
“Are we Moretti?”
My chest tightened.
“You are Carter.”
“But is he Moretti?”
“Yes.”
“So are we both?”
I sat beside him.
“You can belong to people without having the same last name.”
Mila nodded immediately.
“Like Uncle Marcus.”
“Exactly.”
Leo considered that for a long moment.
“Can Dad be family if he wasn't family before?”
I wished Dr. Mercer had already been assigned.
Instead, I gave him the only answer I trusted.
“He was always connected to you.”
“He just did not know it.”
“Now we have to learn what kind of family we can be.”
Leo nodded slowly.
Then he returned to the mirror and practiced Luca's serious expression until Mila laughed at him.
Their curiosity frightened me more than anger would have.
Anger had walls.
Curiosity opened doors.
And once children opened a door to someone, it was difficult to close it without hurting them.
I started to believe the morning had been a warning and nothing more.
Then my phone rang from the twins' school.
I answered immediately.
“This is Nia Carter.”
The administrator sounded shaken.
“Ms. Carter, we need to confirm something.”
“What?”
“A man came to the school approximately twenty minutes ago.”
My body went cold.
“What man?”
“He identified himself as a member of Mr. Moretti's security team.”
I stopped breathing.
“He said he was there to collect Leo and Mila's emergency materials because they would be transferring schools.”
“They are not transferring.”
“We know.”
“Did you give him anything?”
“No.”
“Did he see their records?”
“No.”
My legs weakened with relief.
Then the administrator continued.
“But he left this when security confronted him.”
“What?”
“A document.”
“What document?”
She hesitated.
“It appears to be a notarized authorization signed by you.”
I gripped the counter.
“I did not sign anything.”
“We assumed that after comparing the signature on file.”
“Send it to my attorney now.”
“I will.”
I called Luca before I even hung up properly.
He answered on the first ring.
“What happened?”
Someone must have told him my number only rang like that when something was wrong.
I explained.
He went silent.
“Was it Vale?”
“I don't know.”
“Send me the camera image.”
“Luca, someone forged my signature to access our children's school.”
“I heard you.”
His voice had become terrifyingly calm.
“I am going to find out who.”
An hour later, the school sent security footage.
The man was not Thomas Vale.
Luca's security chief did not recognize him.
Neither did I.
But Serena recognized the company name printed faintly at the bottom of the fake authorization.
It belonged to a family-law document service used by one of Chicago's most aggressive custody firms.
She searched the public docket.
Then she called me with a sentence I had been dreading since the restaurant.
“Nia, someone filed a custody case this afternoon.”
My throat tightened.
“Luca promised me he wouldn't.”
“It wasn't filed by Luca.”
I almost did not understand.
“Then who?”
May you like
Serena took a breath.
“His wife.”
