Chapter 1 - THE AGE OF ARITHMETIC
"They are six."
The words left my mouth quietly, but they struck Luca harder than if I had shouted them across the restaurant.
His face changed before he could stop it.
Six years meant subtraction.
Six years meant counting backward to the winter when our divorce became final.
Six years meant remembering the last weeks of our marriage, when we had still shared a bed twice out of habit and once because grief had made us reach for the only person who understood it.
Luca looked at Leo first.
Then he looked at Lia.
My son had Luca's dark eyes and the same stubborn line through his brows.
My daughter had my mouth, but the Moretti stare belonged to her completely.
Evelyn's fingers closed around Luca's sleeve.
"Luca, this is not the place."
He did not look at her.
"Six?"
I lifted my chin.
"You heard me."
Leo slid off his chair and moved closer to my side.
"Mom, who is he?"
Every adult in the room seemed to stop breathing.
I had spent six years preparing answers for questions my children had not yet asked.
I had rehearsed careful sentences about their father being someone I once loved and someone who had left before he knew they existed.
I had promised myself I would never poison them with bitterness.
I had also promised myself I would never let the Moretti family turn them into property.
Now Luca stood less than three feet away, and every promise felt suddenly fragile.
"His name is Luca," I said.
Lia stared at him with open curiosity.
"Why does he look like Leo?"
Evelyn made a sound that was almost a laugh, except nothing about it was amused.
Luca finally blinked.
"Nia, I need to speak with you alone."
"No."
The answer came too fast for him to misunderstand.
His jaw tightened.
That old expression would once have made me soften.
Now it reminded me of conference rooms and divorce papers.
"We are not doing this in front of them," he said.
"You walked over to my table."
"Because you are sitting here with two six-year-old children who look like me."
I felt Leo's hand catch the fabric of my coat.
The fear in his small gesture burned away the part of me that still remembered Luca as my husband.
"Lower your voice."
Luca looked down at Leo's hand.
His anger vanished so quickly it frightened me more than the anger had.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Leo did not answer.
Lia leaned against my hip.
Evelyn stepped forward at last.
She wore ivory silk, diamonds at her ears, and the expression of a woman watching the floor disappear beneath her feet.
"Nia, I think we can all agree there is an obvious question here."
I turned toward her.
"I don't agree to anything with you."
Her eyes hardened.
"If Luca is their father, he has a right to know."
"And if he isn't?"
It was a cruel question because I already knew the answer.
Luca knew I knew it.
He took one slow breath.
"Are they mine?"
There it was.
Not a demand.
Not an accusation.
A question six years too late.
For one terrible second, I saw the man he had been before suspicion hollowed out our marriage.
I saw the husband who once knelt on our kitchen floor beside me after a negative pregnancy test and rested his forehead against my knee.
I saw the man who had whispered that we were enough even if it never happened.
Then I remembered what came after.
His silence.
His distance.
His mother's sympathetic little looks whenever I entered a room.
The final sentence across the kitchen island.
I don't think I love you the way I used to.
"This is not a conversation you get to force in a restaurant," I said.
Luca's nostrils flared.
"Then tell me where."
"Nowhere today."
I reached for Lia's coat.
Evelyn laughed again, and this time the sharpness was obvious.
"Convenient."
Luca turned his head.
"Evelyn."
"What?"
She folded her arms.
"You are thinking it, too."
"Stop."
"A woman disappears for six years, returns with twins who happen to resemble one of the wealthiest men in Chicago, and we are not supposed to ask why?"
I felt heat rush through my face.
Not shame.
Rage.
"I did not return."
Evelyn's mouth tightened.
"You're in his restaurant district."
"I live in this city."
"You knew he came here."
"I brought my children to lunch after the science museum."
Luca looked at the paper napkin covered in Lia's crooked drawing of a dinosaur wearing a crown.
He looked at the museum stickers on their jackets.
Something in his face shifted.
Evelyn saw it and hated me for it.
"This is ridiculous," she said.
I bent to help Leo with his zipper.
"On that, we agree."
The host had stopped pretending not to listen.
Two women near the window were openly staring.
A man at the bar had his phone angled in our direction.
Luca noticed him.
His entire posture changed.
The billionaire returned in one blink.
"Put the phone down."
The man froze.
Luca did not raise his voice.
He did not have to.
A restaurant manager hurried over and spoke to the guest.
I hated how quickly the room obeyed Luca.
I hated even more that part of me was relieved my children's faces would not be uploaded before we reached the door.
"Nia."
Luca lowered his voice again.
"Give me ten minutes."
"No."
"Five."
"You do not negotiate with me anymore."
The sentence landed between us with all the weight of the divorce decree.
His eyes closed for half a second.
"Then tell me one thing."
I should have walked away.
Instead, I waited.
"When did you find out?"
Evelyn looked sharply at me.
This was worse than the age question.
The age had been mathematics.
This was history.
"After the divorce."
Luca went still.
"How long after?"
I did not answer.
He took a step closer.
"Nia."
"Eleven days after it was final."
His face emptied.
I remembered the drugstore bathroom near my old apartment.
I remembered three tests lined up beside the sink because I had not trusted the first two.
I remembered sitting on cold tile until dawn, one hand over my mouth, terrified to let hope become sound.
I remembered calling my doctor alone.
Luca stared at me as if he could see all of it.
"Eleven days."
"Yes."
"And you never told me."
My throat tightened.
"I did not come back to you."
His eyes sharpened at the wording.
"That isn't what I asked."
I hated that he still noticed language the way he used to.
I hated that he knew me well enough to hear the door I had left open.
"Did you tell me?" he asked.
I looked past him at Evelyn.
She was watching me too carefully.
Then I looked back at Luca.
"I made one attempt."
His breath stopped.
"What attempt?"
I gathered the twins' backpacks from beneath the table.
"Not here."
This time he did not argue.
Maybe because he saw the tremor in my hand.
Maybe because he knew if he pushed once more, I would say nothing at all.
I took Leo's hand.
Lia took my other one.
We walked past Luca toward the exit.
I made it six steps before his voice followed me.
"Nia."
I stopped but did not turn.
"Were they born healthy?"
The question was so unexpectedly human that my anger cracked around the edges.
"They were early."
Silence.
"How early?"
"Thirty-three weeks."
Behind me, Luca swore under his breath.
I remembered incubators.
I remembered Leo's hand no larger than the first joint of my thumb.
I remembered Lia forgetting to breathe for six seconds that felt like the end of the world.
I remembered signing every form alone.
"They are healthy now," I said.
"Nia, I didn't know."
I turned then.
The fear in his eyes was real.
That did not make it my responsibility.
"No," I said.
"You didn't."
We left the restaurant.
Outside, Chicago wind cut between the buildings.
I got the twins into the car with hands that would not stop shaking.
Leo buckled himself in.
Lia waited until I closed her door before whispering through the glass.
"Mom, is Luca our dad?"
My heart stopped.
Before I could answer, my phone rang inside my coat.
I expected Luca's name.
Instead, the screen showed a number I had not seen in almost seven years.
BIANCA MORETTI.
Luca's mother.
The woman who had once held my hands after a failed fertility appointment and told me she was praying for a miracle.
The woman I had not spoken to since the week before my divorce.
I stared at the screen until the call ended.
Then a message appeared.
DO NOT TELL LUCA ABOUT THE LETTER.
For six years, I had believed my letter never reached him.
Now I knew someone had read it.
May you like
And Bianca Moretti had just told me exactly who.
