Chapter 5 - NINE WOMEN
Daniel Mercer refused to speak over the phone.
He refused to email documents.
He refused to tell Michael exactly where he was staying.
Fear had apparently taught him discipline.
By noon, Luca had arranged for Michael to drive north with a retired federal investigator named Teresa Vale.
I refused to go.
Luca did not ask twice.
That was becoming a pattern.
He would make one request.
I would say no.
He would stop.
Six years ago, I would have considered that basic respect.
Now it felt almost suspicious because I remembered how quickly he used to replace difficult conversations with decisions.
Evelyn left my apartment shortly after Michael.
Before she walked out, she stopped beside me.
"If Mercer has my file, I want a copy."
"So do I."
"And if he says Veronica paid him?"
"Then we stop guessing."
Evelyn's mouth tightened.
"I stopped guessing last night."
She left without saying goodbye to Luca.
He watched the door close.
For a moment, he looked like he might follow her.
He did not.
I crossed my arms.
"You should go after your wife."
"She told me not to."
"Since when has that stopped a Moretti?"
His eyes flicked toward mine.
"Since I finally started understanding what ignoring boundaries costs."
That answer irritated me because it was good.
I turned toward the kitchen instead.
"The twins need lunch."
"Can I help?"
I almost said no automatically.
Then Eli appeared in the doorway.
"Can Dad make grilled cheese?"
Luca stared at him.
Eli looked confused.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Luca cleared his throat.
"Yes."
Mara appeared behind her brother.
"Mom burns it sometimes."
"Thank you, Mara."
"It is true."
Luca's mouth twitched.
I pointed toward the kitchen.
"Bread is on the counter."
The most powerful businessman I had ever known walked into my kitchen and looked at a loaf of bread like it was an unfamiliar legal document.
Eli climbed onto a stool.
"Do you know what you are doing?"
"Absolutely."
Luca opened the refrigerator.
"Where is the cheese?"
Mara sighed.
"You do not know what you are doing."
For ten minutes, something impossible happened.
Luca cooked lunch for his children.
He burned the first sandwich.
Mara laughed so hard milk came out of her nose.
Eli told him he needed more butter.
Luca argued that the pan was too hot.
I stood against the counter with my arms folded and watched a life that should have happened six years earlier arrive late and awkward in my kitchen.
It was not beautiful.
It was not healed.
It was painful enough to make me leave the room.
I went into the bathroom and locked the door.
Then I pressed both hands against the sink.
I had imagined Luca meeting the twins hundreds of times over the years.
Sometimes in anger.
Sometimes in fear.
Sometimes when I was lonely enough to picture him standing at their school concert without knowing why.
I had never imagined him burning grilled cheese.
That ordinary moment hurt more than the restaurant.
A soft knock touched the door.
"Nia?"
Luca.
"I am fine."
"Okay."
He walked away.
No demand.
No question.
I hated that too.
By four that afternoon, Michael called.
We put him on speaker at the dining table.
Luca sat across from me.
Eli and Mara were coloring in the bedroom.
"We have Mercer," Michael said.
"Is he safe?" I asked.
"For now."
"What does that mean?"
"He has agreed to come back to Chicago if we put him somewhere secure and if his attorney is present."
Luca leaned forward.
"Does he have the files?"
"Some of them."
"Some?"
"The originals were destroyed six years ago."
My stomach dropped.
"By whom?"
"Mercer says Veronica ordered him to destroy his copies after the clinic network completed a digital migration."
"Did he?"
"Not all of them."
Luca's jaw tightened.
"Why keep any?"
Michael's voice became dry.
"Because Mercer is dishonest, not stupid."
I understood immediately.
"Insurance."
"Exactly."
Luca leaned back.
"What did my mother pay him to do?"
There was a pause.
"Mercer says he was paid to alter records as they moved between internal systems and external patient portals."
I felt cold.
"Whose records?"
"Nine women connected to high-net-worth families."
"Connected how?"
"Wives. Fiancees. Daughters-in-law."
Luca swore.
Michael continued.
"Mercer says Veronica was not his only client."
That surprised all of us.
"What?" Luca asked.
"He claims he worked for a private family consultant who arranged payments on behalf of several wealthy clients."
"Name."
"Margaret Sloan."
Luca looked at me.
The name meant nothing to me.
"Who is she?"
"A former hospital compliance attorney."
Michael answered before Luca could.
"She later built a concierge risk firm for family offices."
"Risk?"
"Reputation, inheritance, marriage screening, private investigations."
The words made my skin crawl.
"Marriage screening?"
"Wealthy families sometimes hire firms to perform extensive background reviews of future spouses."
"That does not include falsifying medical records."
"No."
Michael's voice hardened.
"It absolutely does not."
Luca stood and began pacing.
"Did my mother hire Sloan?"
"Mercer says yes."
"For Nia?"
"Yes."
"For Evelyn?"
Another pause.
"Yes."
Luca stopped.
"Why Evelyn?"
"Mercer does not know."
"He altered both files."
"He says he processed files according to instructions without knowing the family strategy behind them."
I laughed bitterly.
"How convenient for him."
"He is not presenting himself as innocent," Michael said.
"Good."
"He is presenting himself as scared."
"Also convenient."
Luca looked at me.
"You do not have to forgive him."
"I am aware."
Michael cleared his throat.
"There is something else."
I closed my eyes.
"There is always something else."
"Mercer kept a spreadsheet."
"Of the nine women?"
"Yes."
"Names?"
"Initials and instruction codes."
Luca leaned over the speakerphone.
"What codes?"
"Delay conception. Discourage marriage. Question paternity. Increase risk profile."
My stomach twisted.
"Those were actual categories?"
"According to Mercer."
"What was mine?"
Michael went quiet.
That silence told me I was not going to like the answer.
"Tell me."
"Discourage marriage continuation."
The room went still.
Six years of pain reduced to three words in a spreadsheet.
Discourage marriage continuation.
Someone had looked at my life and converted my heartbreak into an instruction code.
"Evelyn?"
Michael hesitated again.
"Delay conception."
Luca gripped the edge of the table.
"Why?"
"We do not know yet."
"And the other seven?"
"Different instructions."
I stared at the speakerphone.
"Were any of them harmed physically?"
"Mercer says he never changed medication orders or procedures."
"He changed diagnoses."
"Yes."
"That changes treatment."
Michael went silent.
"So yes," I said.
"Potentially, yes."
Luca's expression had become frighteningly calm.
"Bring him back."
"Tomorrow morning."
"And Sloan?"
"We are locating her."
The apartment remained quiet after Michael's voice disappeared.
Luca stared at the dark phone screen.
I watched his thumb move over the edge of the case again and again.
"Nine women," he said.
"Yes."
"How does something like that happen?"
I laughed softly.
"One person decides another person's life is manageable."
He looked at me.
"That sounds pointed."
"It is."
He accepted it.
I sat across from him.
"Do you remember Dr. Heller?"
His eyes narrowed as he searched his memory.
"Your primary fertility specialist."
"Our fertility specialist."
"Right."
"Do you remember the last appointment you attended?"
Luca looked down.
"Not clearly."
"I do."
I could still see the room.
The paper on the exam table.
The anatomical chart on the wall.
The rain against the narrow window.
Dr. Heller had explained that nothing in my testing justified giving up.
He had recommended patience.
Luca had checked his watch twice.
Then his phone buzzed.
"You left before he finished talking," I said.
Luca closed his eyes.
"I had a board call."
"I know."
"I thought the appointment was basically over."
"It was over for you."
My voice stayed calm.
"For me, he spent another twenty minutes explaining that unexplained infertility was not the same as my body being broken."
Luca's face tightened.
"I never heard that."
"Exactly."
"Did you tell me?"
"I tried."
He looked up.
"What did I say?"
I remembered too well.
"You said we had already talked to enough doctors."
Pain moved across his face.
"Nia."
"I am not telling you this to punish you."
"It feels deserved anyway."
"I am telling you because a forged report only worked because you had already stopped listening to the real ones."
The room went silent.
That was the part no conspiracy could erase.
Veronica could have handed Luca a hundred lies.
He still chose which ones felt easier to believe.
"I know," he said.
"Do you?"
"I am starting to."
He looked toward the bedroom.
"If we had not walked into that restaurant..."
"Do not."
"What?"
"Do not build another imaginary life and punish yourself with it."
"How do I not?"
"The same way I stopped imagining what would have happened if I called you."
He went still.
"Did you imagine it?"
"For years."
"What did I do in those versions?"
I smiled sadly.
"Everything."
"That sounds dangerous."
"It was."
"Sometimes you came back and loved me again."
"Sometimes you took the babies and hated me."
"Sometimes you stayed out of guilt and we destroyed each other slowly."
Luca swallowed.
"Which one do you think was true?"
"None of them."
I looked directly at him.
"Because none of them happened."
That was the cruelest answer and the only useful one.
We had to live in the timeline we actually created.
Not the one guilt kept editing after midnight.
The call ended.
For several minutes, neither Luca nor I spoke.
Then he said,
"I need to establish paternity."
I looked up sharply.
"We discussed this."
"I know."
"Then why are you saying it now?"
"Because if my mother is using corporate control to fund surveillance, I can remove part of her leverage by activating the trust."
"Using my children as a lever."
"No."
"That is exactly what you just described."
He sat across from me.
"Nia, listen to me."
"I am listening."
"I want to legally acknowledge them because they are my children."
"And because it weakens your mother."
"Both things can be true."
I hated that he was right.
"What happens after paternity?"
"We create a parenting agreement."
"You mean lawyers create a parenting agreement."
"Only if we cannot."
"And if I say no?"
His face tightened.
"Then eventually I would have to decide whether to petition the court."
The words hit like a slap.
I stood.
"There it is."
"I am not threatening you."
"You just told me you might sue me for access to my children."
"Our children."
"Do not correct me right now."
He stood too.
"I missed six years."
"You keep saying that as if I stole them from you in a vacuum."
"I know why you made the choice."
"No, Luca."
My voice shook.
"You understand the explanation."
"That is not the same as living in the fear I lived in."
He went quiet.
"When I was pregnant, I had no idea whether telling you would bring back the man I loved or the man who had already decided I was defective."
"I never thought you were defective."
"Then you should have behaved differently."
The sentence landed hard.
He looked away.
I continued.
"I will not let guilt rush my children into a relationship they did not ask for."
"I do not want to rush them."
"Then prove it."
"How?"
"No court filings for thirty days."
He stared at me.
"Thirty?"
"Thirty."
"The trust delay gives my mother time."
"Then fight her without using my children as corporate ammunition."
He looked furious.
Not at me.
At the situation.
"Fine."
"Fine?"
"Thirty days."
"In writing."
A flicker of disbelief crossed his face.
"You want a contract?"
"I learned from a billionaire."
For the first time, Luca smiled.
It vanished quickly.
"You will have it tonight."
Before he left, Eli followed him to the door.
"Do you know where we live now?"
Luca looked at me before answering.
"Yes."
Eli frowned.
"Because of the people who watched us?"
Luca's face tightened.
"Partly."
"Were you watching us too?"
The question landed with brutal innocence.
Luca crouched.
"No."
"Never?"
"I did not know you existed until the restaurant."
Eli looked relieved and sad at the same time.
"So you were not ignoring us."
Luca swallowed.
"No."
Mara appeared behind her brother.
"Did you ignore Mom?"
I closed my eyes.
Children did not believe in gradual disclosure.
Luca looked at me.
I gave him nothing.
He had to answer for himself.
"Sometimes," he said.
Mara's eyebrows pulled together.
"Why?"
"Because I was scared and I thought work was easier than talking."
"That is silly."
"Yes."
"Mom talks a lot."
"I remember."
I glared at him.
He almost smiled.
Eli asked,
"Did you say sorry?"
Luca's smile disappeared.
"Not enough."
"How many times do you have to say it?"
He looked at me again.
"As many as it takes to mean it with what I do."
That answer went through me.
Eli nodded as if he had completed an inspection.
Then he reached into his pocket and handed Luca a folded sheet of paper.
"What is this?" Luca asked.
"Our phone number."
My chest tightened.
Eli had written my number in oversized digits with one number backward.
Luca stared at it like it was a legal document worth more than his company.
"Thank you."
"Mom already has your number."
"I know."
"But now you have ours."
Mara added,
"Do not call after eight thirty because bedtime."
Luca nodded solemnly.
"Understood."
"And if Mom says no, that means no."
He looked toward me.
"Also understood."
When the door closed behind him, I leaned against it.
Eli looked up.
"Was that okay?"
"What?"
"Giving him our number."
I stared at my son.
He was asking permission after the fact because he had sensed how fragile everything was.
I crouched.
"Yes."
"Can he call?"
"Yes."
"Every day?"
I hesitated.
Then I forced myself to separate my fear from their curiosity.
"If we agree on a time."
Mara brightened.
"Can he read bedtime stories on the phone?"
My throat tightened.
"Maybe."
That night, Luca called at seven forty-five.
He asked before reading anything.
Eli chose a book about space.
Mara interrupted every third sentence.
Luca did not sound annoyed once.
I stood in the hallway listening to the voice that had once filled my home coming through a phone speaker to children he did not know existed a week earlier.
The scene was painful.
It was also good.
I was beginning to understand that those two things could occupy the same room.
At six, he left.
At six fifteen, my phone rang from an unknown number.
I almost let it go to voicemail.
Then I answered.
"Hello?"
A woman's voice whispered,
"Nia Carter?"
"Yes."
"My name is Rachel Wynn."
The name meant nothing to me.
"I think my medical file is on the list Daniel Mercer kept."
I sat down slowly.
"How did you get my number?"
"That does not matter."
"It matters to me."
She began crying.
"Please."
My anger disappeared.
"What happened?"
May you like
Her next words made my blood run cold.
"They told my husband our baby could not be his."
