Chapter 5 - The Bloodline
The nursery was small, warm, and smelled of baby powder, clean cotton, and dried lavender.
There were no designer Italian cribs, no motorized swings imported from Germany, none of the gilded vanity that Evelyn had been bookmarking for the nursery she wanted in our penthouse. There were two simple wooden cribs painted white, handmade patchwork quilts draped over the rails, and walls painted a soft, pale yellow.
In the left crib, a little boy was pushing himself up onto his hands and knees.
He wore a blue onesie with little bears on the feet. He had a mop of unruly, dark brown hair, chubby cheeks flushed with sleep, and when he turned his head toward the sound of our footsteps, my breath caught in my throat.
Slate-gray eyes.
And there, unmistakable, prominent, carved into his tiny jaw, was the Moretti cleft.
In the adjacent crib, a little girl stirred, stretching her small arms toward the ceiling, letting out a soft, sweet yawn that ended in a burbling coo. She had Natalie’s delicate nose, Natalie’s warm hazel eyes, and curls of auburn hair framing her forehead.
"Leo," Natalie whispered softly, stepping past me to gently lift the little boy into her arms. "And Mia."
I stood frozen in the doorway. My hands were at my sides, trembling so violently I had to ball them into fists to keep from shaking apart.
"He... he looks like my father," I managed to say, the words catching in my chest. "He looks exactly like my father did in the old photographs."
Natalie held Leo against her hip. The little boy stared at me, his gray eyes wide with unblinking curiosity, his thumb finding its way into his mouth. He didn't cry. He tilted his head, watching the tall stranger standing in his doorway.
"He has your temperament," Natalie said quietly, her voice devoid of anger now, left only with the raw, echoing exhaustion of a woman who had carried a mountain alone for too long. "He doesn't smile easily for strangers. But once he knows you... he laughs with his whole body."
She walked over to Mia’s crib, but before she could lean down, I took a step forward.
"May I?" I asked, my voice cracking.
Natalie hesitated. For a fraction of a second, the old fear flickered in her eyes—the instinct to protect her young from the man she had believed was a monster. But then she looked at my face, saw the devastation and reverence there, and slowly stepped aside.
I walked to the crib.
My shadow fell over the little girl. Mia looked up, blinking her hazel eyes, and let out a bright, gurgling laugh, kicking her little feet clad in pink socks.
Slowly, terrifyingly, as if she were made of spun glass that would shatter under the weight of my sins, I slid my hands beneath her small back and thighs.
I lifted her.
She was so light. So impossibly small. Yet the moment her head rested against my chest, the moment her tiny, warm fingers curled around the lapel of my heavy shearling coat, a sensation ripped through my soul like a physical shockwave.
Every board meeting, every billion-dollar contract, every skyscraper of glass and steel I had erected in Chicago—it was all dust. It was meaningless garbage. This—this tiny, fragile heartbeat against my ribs—was the only thing that had ever mattered.
A tear slipped from my eye, splashing onto the fabric of her pink onesie.
"Mia," I whispered, pressing my lips against the soft down of her auburn curls. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Mia patted my cheek with a wet, sticky hand, fascinated by the rough stubble on my jaw.
Behind me, Natalie let out a shuddering breath. I turned, holding Mia against my chest, and saw Natalie holding Leo. We stood there in the quiet nursery of a modest Wisconsin cottage—the family that should have been, the family that had been ripped apart by greed and lies.
"What are you going to do, Luca?" Natalie asked, her voice trembling. "Victor Vance is powerful. He controls the firm's finances. And Evelyn... you're married to her."
I looked from my daughter's bright eyes to my son's steady gaze, and finally to Natalie—the woman whose heart I had broken, but who had somehow kept my bloodline alive in the cold.
The sorrow in my chest didn't vanish, but beneath it, an iron pillar of cold, lethal resolve took root.
"Victor Vance thinks he destroyed me three years ago," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the room feel suddenly smaller. "He thinks he left me a compliant, blind executive while he stole my company and my family. He has no idea what he has awakened."
"Luca—"
"Pack your bags, Natalie."
She stiffened immediately. "I am not going back to Chicago to be your mistress, Luca! I am not hiding in some hotel while you figure out your life!"
"You're not going to a hotel," I said firmly, stepping toward her, looking directly into her eyes. "My grandfather owned a private estate in Lake Geneva. It's fully staffed, fortified, and registered under an old family trust that Victor doesn't even know exists. You and the children will be safe there, with twenty-four-hour private security."
"And you?"
May you like
"I am going back to Chicago," I said, a dark, dangerous smile touching the corners of my mouth. "I am going to sit across from my dear friend Victor. I am going to look at my elegant wife Evelyn. And I am going to lay a trap so deep and so absolute that when it snaps shut, neither of them will ever see the light of day again."
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