Chapter 3: What the Woman Who Destroyed Us Wanted to Say
Luca stared at the message for a long moment.
Then he turned his phone face-down on the table.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't ignore it.
Not yet." I looked at him.
"Does she know?
About Eli and Mara?"
"She will by now." His jaw tightened.
"I told her I'd found the transfer records.
I didn't tell her about the twins.
But she knows I went to Aurelia yesterday.
Her assistant tracks my calendar."
My coffee had gone cold.
I hadn't touched it.
"She'll try to get ahead of this," I said.
"Yes."
"What does that mean for us?"
Luca looked at me directly.
"It means we need to decide what we're doing before she does."
"What are we doing, Luca?"
He didn't answer immediately.
His hands were flat on the table, very still, the way they used to go still when he was working through something he didn't want to say wrong.
"I want to be in their lives," he said.
"Eli and Mara.
Whatever that looks like.
Whatever you'll allow."
"That's not a small thing to just decide over coffee."
"I know."
"They don't know you.
You're a stranger to them."
"I know that too."
"And you're still married to Evelyn."
Something moved across his face.
"Evelyn and I spoke last night."
I waited.
"She asked me one question." He paused.
"She asked whether I had ever stopped loving you."
The coffee shop noise continued around us.
Someone laughed at the counter.
A chair scraped.
"What did you tell her?" I asked.
"The truth."
I didn't ask what the truth was.
I wasn't ready for that answer.
His phone buzzed again.
Same number.
This time he picked it up.
Read the message.
His expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did.
"She wants to meet.
Today.
My office."
"Are you going?"
"Yes." He set the phone down.
"I want you there."
I stared at him.
"Absolutely not."
"Nia—"
"She forged my medical records.
She paid someone to make your husband believe his wife was broken.
She ended my marriage and she doesn't even know she handed me two children in the process." My voice was steady.
I was proud of that.
"I am not sitting across a conference table from that woman until I decide I'm ready."
Luca was quiet for a moment.
"She's going to try to reframe this," he said.
"She's going to make it about protecting the company.
About protecting me.
She's going to find a way to make herself the reasonable one in the room."
"Then you need to walk in there already knowing that."
"I do know it."
"Good."
He looked at me.
"What do you want, Nia?
Not what you'll allow.
What do you actually want?"
The question sat between us like something breakable.
I thought about Eli the night before, asking me at dinner why some kids had dads who picked them up from school.
I had given him a careful answer about families being different shapes.
He had nodded seriously and gone back to his pasta.
Mara had watched me the whole time.
"I want my children to be safe," I said.
"I want them to know who they are and where they come from.
I want them to be loved by people who actually deserve them."
"And me?"
"I don't know yet, Luca."
He nodded.
That was all.
He picked up his phone and typed a reply to his mother.
I watched his face while he did it.
The softness I used to know was still there, buried under everything the years had built over it.
I didn't know yet whether that meant anything.
He set the phone down.
"She'll be at my office at two."
"Tell me what she says."
"I will." He stood.
Then stopped.
"The administrator.
The one she paid."
"What about him?"
"He still works at the clinic."
I went still.
"I have his name," Luca said.
"I have the transfer record.
And I have a lawyer who has been waiting for my call since yesterday morning."
He left two twenties on the table for a twelve-dollar order and walked out.
I sat there alone for another few minutes, looking at the folder he had left behind.
My name.
My date of birth.
A diagnosis that had never been mine.
Seven years of a life I might have lived differently, sitting in a manila folder on a coffee shop table.
I closed it.
Then I took out my phone and called Ava.
She picked up on the second ring.
"I need you to do something for me," I said.
"Name it."
"I need you to find out everything you can about a clinic administrator at the North Shore Fertility Center.
Luca has a name.
I'll send it to you."
A pause.
"Nia.
What's happening?"
"Someone helped destroy my marriage seven years ago," I said.
"And they're still out there."
May you like
Ava was quiet for exactly two seconds.
"Send me the name."
