Chapter 3 - The Price of a Father
“You haven’t changed at all, have you?” I said through the wood, refusing to turn the deadbolt. “Still threatening people with your checkbook when you don't get your way.”
“Nia, please.”
The word *please* sounded foreign on his tongue. In all the years I had known Luca Moretti, I had heard him say that word maybe twice. It sounded jagged, like glass scraping against stone.
“The children are awake,” I said coldly. “You will not cause a scene in my home. Leave, Luca. Talk to Marcus Vance tomorrow.”
“I don't give a damn about Marcus Vance,” Luca rasped, stepping closer. I could see the shadow of his hand resting against the wood. “I just spent the last two hours at Shaw Global’s headquarters tearing through server archives from seven years ago. I didn't come here to fight you, Nia. I came to see them.”
My breath caught. “You don't get to see them.”
“They are my children!” he roared, his control snapping for a split second before he pulled it back, his voice dropping into a desperate, strangled whisper. “They have my face, Nia. Amara has my mother’s eyes. You think I don't know the dates? You were pregnant when you left the penthouse. You were carrying my children when I…”
He stopped. The hallway was dead silent except for the heavy sound of his breathing.
“When you threw me out on the street?” I finished for him, my voice dripping with venom. “When you called me a thief and a whore who traded your secrets to the Shaws? When you threatened to send me to prison?”
A groan of genuine agony escaped him. “Nia, open the door. Look at what’s in this folder. Just look at it.”
I hesitated. Every survival instinct I had developed over seven hard years screamed at me to keep that door shut, to call the police, to run out the fire escape. But the raw, uncharacteristic desperation in his voice paralyzed me.
I turned the chain. I unlocked the deadbolt.
I opened the door six inches, keeping my body firmly in the gap.
Luca stood there under the flickering fluorescent light of the hallway. Up close, the polished billionaire was completely unraveled. The shadows under his eyes were bruised and purple. His jaw was covered in dark stubble, and his hands were trembling—the same hands that had once signed multi-billion-dollar mergers without a single tremor.
He held up the manila envelope.
“What is that?” I demanded.
“The IP addresses that transferred the software specs seven years ago,” he whispered, his dark eyes shining with unshed tears. “They didn't come from your laptop, Nia. The digital signature was forged using a clone of your MAC address. It originated from an IP registered to Richard Shaw’s private estate in the Hamptons.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath me. “What?”
“You were telling the truth,” Luca choke-whispered. He looked down at the folder, then back at me, his gaze entirely broken. “You didn't betray me. You never took a dime. Evelyn’s father orchestrated the leak, framed you, and Evelyn made sure I found the fabricated breadcrumbs right when we were most vulnerable. They wanted you gone so they could force the Shaw-Moretti merger.”
The air left my lungs in a cold rush. Seven years of internalized shame, of wondering why my husband hadn't trusted me, of replaying that horrible night a thousand times in my head… all of it snapped into horrifying clarity.
“You… you believed them over your wife,” I whispered, tears burning my eyes. “You took their word, their planted evidence, and you destroyed us.”
“I was blind. I was arrogant, paranoid, and out of my mind with rage,” Luca said, stepping forward. For the first time, I saw tears spill over his dark lashes. “I ruined the only real thing I ever had. And while I was living in that empty, gilded hell, you were here… raising my son and daughter alone.”
“They are *my* son and daughter,” I spat, slamming a palm against his chest to stop his advance. His heart was hammering beneath his tailored shirt like a trapped bird. “You don't get to weep now, Luca! You don't get to show up with a folder of tech forensics and expect me to hand you two beautiful lives you threw away!”
“Mom?”
A small voice cut through the hallway.
Noah was standing in the foyer, holding his stuffed blue bear, Amara hovering right behind him like a tiny sentinel.
Luca froze. His entire body locked up, his gaze darting past my shoulder to the two children.
The look on his face wasn't the look of a ruthless titan of industry. It was the look of a starving man looking through a bakery window. He fell to his knees right there on the rough hallway carpet, bringing himself down to eye level with them.
“Noah…” Luca whispered, his voice cracking completely. “Amara…”
Amara stepped forward, placing herself squarely in front of her brother. She looked at the man kneeling before her—a man weeping openly in a cheap apartment hallway—and crossed her small arms over her chest.
“Are you the reason my mommy cried in the bathroom when we were little?” Amara asked.
The question hit Luca like a hollow-point bullet. His head dropped, his broad shoulders shaking violently as he pressed his forehead against the wooden doorframe, weeping so hard he couldn't form words.
May you like
I stood between him and my children, my own tears falling unchecked, realizing with terrifying certainty that the past had caught up with us, and none of us would ever be the same again.
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