Chapter 5: Thursday at Ten
I arrived at the café twelve minutes early.
I chose a table near the window — not because I wanted to be seen, but because I needed to see him coming.
I needed those few seconds of watching him cross the street, before he sat down and the conversation became real, to remind myself who I was now.
Not the woman who had set her teacup down carefully so he wouldn't see her break.
Someone else.
Someone who had built something without him.
He was on time.
He came through the door in a dark coat, no tie, and for a moment he looked so much like the man I had married — before the empire, before the skyscrapers, before the governors — that something in my chest pulled tight.
He sat down across from me.
Neither of us spoke first.
The server came.
We both ordered coffee.
We waited until she left.
Then Luca said: "I owe you an apology."
"Yes," I said.
"You do."
He looked at the table.
"I believed something I should have questioned.
I let someone I trusted put a thought in my head and I never—" He stopped.
"I never asked you directly.
I just started to disappear.
And I told myself that was kinder."
"It wasn't."
"No." He looked up.
"It wasn't."
I wrapped both hands around my cup.
"His name is Richard Holt," I said.
Luca went very still.
"He told you the fertility specialist's assistant had raised private concerns about my results," I said.
"Concerns I supposedly hadn't disclosed.
He made it sound like he was protecting you."
The color left Luca's face in stages.
"How do you know that?"
"Priya Mehta.
She left Moretti Global about eight months after our divorce.
She called me.
She felt guilty."
"Priya." He said the name like he was placing it.
"She was in legal."
"She was.
She heard Richard tell the story to two other senior staff.
She said he'd been doing it for months.
Slowly.
Carefully.
The way he did everything."
Luca's jaw tightened.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because by the time I found out, you had already married Evelyn." I met his eyes.
"And I had two infants and no interest in reopening a wound that had barely closed."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Richard is still at Moretti Global," he said.
"I know."
"He's been my CFO for—"
"Thirteen years.
I know that too."
Something moved across his face.
Not anger yet.
Something colder and more deliberate than anger.
"You said there was more than I thought," he said.
I reached into my bag and set a folded envelope on the table between us.
He looked at it.
Didn't touch it.
"What is this?"
"Priya wasn't the only one who knew," I said.
"She wasn't even the first.
There's a letter in there from Dr.
Anand's office — my fertility specialist.
Written fourteen months before our divorce.
It was sent to Moretti Global's legal department by mistake, addressed to Richard Holt's assistant.
It was never forwarded to you."
Luca's hand moved toward the envelope.
"It confirms my results were normal," I said.
"All of them.
Every test.
There was never anything to disclose."
He picked up the envelope.
His hands were not steady.
"Richard intercepted this," he said.
It was not a question.
"His assistant signed for it.
I have the delivery confirmation."
Luca set the envelope down without opening it.
He pressed both palms flat on the table.
He stared at the wall behind me for several seconds.
Then he said, very quietly: "He took my marriage."
"Yes."
"He took seven years with my children."
"Yes."
The café was warm and small and smelled like coffee and pastry.
A couple at the next table was laughing about something on their phone.
Outside, a bus went past.
"I want to meet them," Luca said.
"I know."
"Not today.
Not until you're ready.
But Nia—" His voice broke on my name.
Just slightly.
"I want to know them."
I looked at him for a long time.
"Then we start with a DNA test," I said.
"Formal.
Legal.
We do this properly."
"Whatever you need."
"And Richard Holt," I said, "is your problem to deal with.
Not mine."
Luca picked up the envelope.
"He won't be a problem much longer," he said.
I believed him.
May you like
But I also knew that Richard Holt had survived thirteen years at Moretti Global by being very, very good at protecting himself.
And I had a feeling he wasn't going to go quietly.
