Chapter 1 - Handle It Yourself
The contraction hit so violently that my knees nearly folded beneath me.
One second, I was standing beneath the covered maternity entrance with my overnight bag hanging from my shoulder.
The next, I was gripping a concrete pillar while pain ripped through my abdomen hard enough to steal the air from my lungs.
My phone was pressed against my ear.
“Luca,” I whispered.
Music thundered through the background on his end of the call.
People were laughing.
Glasses clinked.
Somebody cheered.
I could practically picture the private dining room at Bellini’s, Wendy’s favorite Italian restaurant downtown. She had been planning her sixtieth birthday celebration for six months.
Apparently, no one had planned for her grandson to arrive on the same night.
“Jessi, I already told you,” Luca said impatiently. “I’m in the middle of dinner.”
“My water broke.”
There was a pause.
Not concern.
Not panic.
Just annoyance.
“Okay.”
I blinked.
“Okay?”
“You’re already at the hospital, right?”
Another contraction began building.
“Yes.”
“So you’re fine.”
“I’m not fine, Luca.”
“You’re surrounded by doctors.”
“I’m giving birth to our son.”
“And I’m at my mother’s sixtieth birthday.”
The pain intensified.
I bent forward.
“Luca, please.”
That word came out smaller than I wanted it to.
Please.
After four years of marriage, apparently that was what I had become.
A woman begging her husband to care that their child was being born.
Behind him, I heard Wendy’s unmistakable voice.
“Is she still carrying on?”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
Luca muffled the receiver, but not enough.
“She says her water broke.”
Wendy laughed.
Actually laughed.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Women have been giving birth for thousands of years.”
Someone at the table chuckled with her.
My throat tightened.
Luca returned to the phone.
“You heard Mom.”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I heard her.”
“Handle it yourself, Jessi. Stop being so dramatic.”
Then the call ended.
For several seconds, I stared at the black screen.
A nurse in blue scrubs hurried through the automatic doors.
“Ma’am?”
I couldn’t answer.
She looked at the puddle beneath my shoes, then at my stomach.
“Oh. Okay. Come with me.”
She brought a wheelchair.
As I lowered myself into it, she asked the question that would stay with me forever.
“Is someone coming?”
I looked down at my phone.
Not my husband.
I had met Luca four years earlier at a charity accounting seminar in Chicago.
He had been charming, funny, confident.
More importantly, he seemed uninterested in wealth.
Ironic, considering the truth.
My legal surname was Sterling.
My father was Arthur Sterling.
Sterling Capital.
Sterling Hotels.
Sterling Aviation.
Sterling Foundation.
Depending on which magazine you read, Dad’s estimated net worth changed by several billion dollars every year.
But after my mother died, I wanted something ordinary.
One relationship where nobody looked at me and saw a bank account before they saw a person.
So when I moved to Chicago, I began using my mother’s maiden name professionally.
Jessi Carter.
Luca knew my father and I were estranged.
He believed Dad had been some sort of retired salesman.
I never corrected him.
At first, my secrecy felt harmless.
Then Luca began making comments.
“Trust-fund kids are parasites.”
“Rich families raise useless children.”
“If somebody inherits money, they’ll never understand real work.”
Each comment made revealing the truth harder.
Then Wendy entered my life.
Wendy Romano could make an insult sound like advice.
“You should dress better for Luca.”
“You work too much.”
“You’re lucky he doesn’t mind that your family has nothing.”
When I became pregnant, she became worse.
She criticized our nursery.
My doctors.
My maternity leave.
Even the name Leo.
“Too old-fashioned,” she said.
But Luca always defended her.
“She’s just opinionated.”
“She means well.”
“She raised me alone.”
“You know how she is.”
That final sentence had become the excuse for everything.
You know how she is.
Apparently, everyone knew how Wendy was.
The only person expected to change was me.
Another contraction pulled me back to the present.
The nurse pushed me inside.
“Who should we call?”
My first instinct was humiliation.
Nobody.
I could do this alone.
Then pain hit again.
And underneath the pain was something worse.
Fear.
I looked at my phone.
There was one number I had avoided for twenty-three months.
Dad.
My thumb hovered over it.
Arthur and I hadn’t stopped loving each other.
We had simply become experts at disappointing each other.
After Mom died, Dad buried himself in work.
I resented him.
He tried controlling my career.
I pulled farther away.
Our final argument ended with me telling him I wanted to build a life without his money.
He said I was confusing independence with isolation.
I told him not to call until he learned the difference.
He respected that.
Maybe too well.
I pressed the number.
He answered on the first ring.
“Jessi?”
One word.
That was all it took.
I tried speaking normally.
“Dad.”
Then a contraction tightened.
I inhaled sharply.
His voice changed instantly.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at Northwestern Memorial.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m in labor.”
Silence.
Then:
“Where’s Luca?”
I closed my eyes.
“At dinner.”
“What?”
“With Wendy.”
Another pause.
Longer.
Colder.
But when Dad spoke again, his voice was calm.
“I’m coming.”
“You’re in New York.”
“I landed in Chicago forty minutes ago.”
I opened my eyes.
“What?”
“I had a foundation meeting tomorrow.”
Of course he did.
Dad seemed to own pieces of half the cities he visited.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Dad—”
“Jessi.”
His voice softened.
“You called me.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“I did.”
“I’m coming.”
Twenty-two minutes later, the doors opened.
Arthur Sterling walked into the maternity ward wearing charcoal trousers, a white shirt, and an old gray coat I recognized immediately.
Mom had bought him that coat.
He still wore it.
No assistant.
No driver.
No security team.
Just Dad.
He stopped when he saw me.
For half a second, neither of us spoke.
Then he crossed the room and wrapped both hands around mine.
“I’m here.”
That was it.
No lecture.
No questions.
No I told you so.
Just:
I’m here.
Fourteen hours later, I understood how much those two words mattered.
Dad stayed through every contraction.
He brought ice chips.
He rubbed my back.
He listened when I cursed.
At one point, I apologized for screaming at him.
He laughed.
“You used worse language when you were sixteen.”
At 4:17 a.m., my son entered the world.
Leo Arthur Carter-Romano.
Seven pounds, four ounces.
Dark hair.
Tiny fists.
Angry lungs.
Perfect.
When the nurse placed him against my chest, I started crying so hard I couldn’t speak.
Dad stood beside the bed, staring down at him.
“Want to hold your grandson?”
His mouth trembled.
“I haven’t held a baby in thirty years.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
Dad laughed through his tears.
I placed Leo in his arms.
Arthur Sterling, a man who had negotiated acquisitions worth billions without blinking, looked terrified by seven pounds of sleeping baby.
Then Leo curled one tiny hand around Dad’s finger.
My father broke.
Tears slid down his face.
“He’s perfect.”
I watched them.
My father.
My son.
And suddenly, something inside me became clear.
Luca had spent years telling me family loyalty meant accepting Wendy’s cruelty.
But loyalty wasn’t obedience.
It wasn’t humiliation.
It wasn’t begging someone to choose you.
Family was the person who answered the phone.
The person who came.
My own phone buzzed.
A message from Luca.
I opened it.
Mom loved the watch I bought her. Coming home Monday. Don’t start another fight.
For several seconds, I simply stared.
Then I took a screenshot.
Dad noticed.
“Everything okay?”
For the first time in years, my hands weren’t shaking.
“Yes.”
And I meant it.
Because Luca thought the biggest problem waiting for him Monday would be an angry wife.
He didn’t know I had spent twelve years following money that people believed couldn’t be found.
He didn’t know I was already remembering things.
Joint account transfers.
Credit card charges.
Business expenses Luca had dismissed.
Payments Wendy had received.
And he definitely didn’t know who was holding his son.
I looked at Dad.
“I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Come home with me.”
His brows lifted slightly.
I looked down at Leo sleeping between us.
“Luca’s coming home Monday.”
Dad understood.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing.”
I smiled faintly.
“Just hold your grandson.”
Because three days later, Luca Romano was going to walk into our living room expecting the same wife he had abandoned.
Instead, he was going to discover two things.
Arthur Sterling was my father.
May you like
And his marriage had just changed forever.
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