Chapter 3 - The Lie About the Baby
Lucian read the message twice.
Then a third time.
Aria watched something colder than anger settle across his face.
“Who sent it?” she asked.
“We’re finding out.”
“Lucian.”
He looked at her.
She held his gaze.
“You don’t believe it, do you?”
His silence lasted only a second.
But Aria felt every fraction of it.
She stepped backward.
“That hesitation was enough.”
“Aria.”
“No.”
She turned away.
Lucian caught himself before reaching for her.
“I was calculating who benefits from making me doubt you.”
“Then say that.”
“I am saying it now.”
“Too late.”
The message had accomplished exactly what its sender intended.
Not because Lucian truly believed Aria had betrayed him.
Because it reminded both of them what their marriage had originally been.
A transaction.
An heir.
A deadline.
A woman chosen partly because of medical reports.
The baby suddenly became evidence instead of a miracle.
Aria hated that.
The following morning, Lucian offered to arrange a prenatal paternity test.
Aria stared at him across the breakfast table.
“Do you want one?”
“No.”
“Then we’re not doing it.”
A pause.
“Good.”
Lucian nodded.
The decision surprised Carlos.
It surprised Aria more.
“You’re willing to stake everything on trust?”
Lucian looked at her.
“No.”
Her heart sank.
Then he continued.
“I am staking everything on you.”
The distinction mattered.
Security tightened around the mansion.
Aria hated it.
Two drivers became four.
Her gallery received additional guards.
Her schedule was monitored.
Lucian argued that someone had breached confidential medical systems.
Aria argued that pregnancy had not turned her into property.
They compromised badly.
Which was apparently how marriage worked.
Meanwhile, Lucian’s medical results arrived.
The mass was malignant.
The cancer had returned.
Treatment would begin immediately.
Lucian told everyone except Aria that he intended to continue working normally.
Aria ignored him.
She attended every appointment.
Sat beside him during infusions.
Brought gallery catalogs when he refused novels.
And discovered that Lucian Moretti, feared by half of Chicago, became unbearably grumpy when nurses told him what to do.
“You cannot leave yet,” Aria told him one afternoon.
“I have a meeting.”
“You have an IV.”
“I possess both arms.”
“You also possess cancer.”
The nurse turned away to hide a smile.
Lucian glared at Aria.
“You enjoy this.”
“Immensely.”
Something changed during those months.
Their child was no longer merely Lucian’s heir.
The baby became theirs.
Aria found Lucian reading pregnancy books at two in the morning.
He pretended they were financial reports.
She discovered a hidden nursery design on his tablet.
He claimed an architect had sent it unsolicited.
When they learned the baby was a girl, Lucian said nothing for nearly a minute.
Aria worried the news had disappointed him.
Then she saw tears in his eyes.
“A girl,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
Lucian looked away.
“My first daughter…”
Aria took his hand.
“This daughter isn’t replacing her.”
“I know.”
“She gets her own story.”
Lucian nodded.
But someone was still trying to destroy that story.
Carlos eventually traced the medical breach to an employee at a private laboratory.
The employee had disappeared.
Then Thomas Bennett vanished.
Aria received the call at work.
Her father’s apartment had been emptied.
No struggle.
No broken lock.
Just gone.
On the kitchen counter was a note.
I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.
Aria brought it to Lucian.
“What did he mean?”
Lucian did not know.
Carlos searched Thomas’s financial records.
They found something unexpected.
Regular payments.
For three years.
Someone had been sending Thomas five thousand dollars every month.
The money stopped immediately after Aria married Lucian.
“Who?” Aria asked.
Carlos placed a bank document on the desk.
“The account belongs to a holding company.”
“Whose?”
Carlos looked uncomfortable.
“Moretti Holdings.”
Aria turned toward Lucian.
He looked genuinely surprised.
“I did not authorize this.”
“Your company paid my father?”
“Apparently.”
“For three years?”
“Yes.”
Aria remembered what Lucian had admitted.
He had known about her for three years.
The exact same period.
Her stomach turned.
“You expect me to believe that’s coincidence?”
“No.”
“Then explain it.”
“I cannot.”
Lucian summoned his accountant.
Records were examined.
Signatures compared.
Authorization codes traced.
The payments had been approved through an executive account belonging to Lucian’s cousin, Matteo Moretti.
Matteo was sixty-one.
Polished.
Educated.
And, according to Lucian, the man most likely to control the organization if Lucian died without an heir.
Aria understood immediately.
“Your cousin paid my father.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Lucian’s face hardened.
“That is what we are going to discover.”
Matteo arrived that evening.
He denied everything.
The account had been compromised.
The signatures forged.
He suggested Thomas had orchestrated the payments himself.
Lucian listened.
Then asked one question.
“Why did you access Aria’s medical records?”
Matteo froze.
Aria looked at Carlos.
A trap.
Carlos had never said they knew who ordered the breach.
Matteo realized his mistake.
Too late.
His pleasant expression disappeared.
“You’re making a fool of yourself over this woman.”
Lucian stood.
“Careful.”
“She was supposed to solve a problem. Instead, she became one.”
Aria felt cold.
“What do you mean, supposed to?”
Matteo looked at her.
And smiled.
“Ask your husband why your father suddenly discovered a Moretti lender three years after Lucian first saw you.”
Lucian moved around the desk.
Carlos stepped between the cousins.
“Enough,” Lucian said.
Matteo laughed.
“You still haven’t told her everything?”
“Told me what?”
Nobody answered.
Aria looked at Lucian.
“What haven’t you told me?”
Lucian’s face changed.
And she knew.
There was another secret.
A worse one.
“Lucian.”
He looked at her.
“Three years ago,” he said slowly, “after I first learned who you were, I asked Matteo to find a legitimate way to invest in your father’s business.”
Aria stopped breathing.
“You what?”
“I intended to stabilize him financially.”
“Why?”
Lucian’s voice lowered.
“Because I thought helping your father would give me a reason to meet you.”
The room went silent.
Aria felt sick.
“You entered our lives deliberately.”
“Yes.”
“And Matteo turned that into loans.”
“Yes.”
“And when Dad failed…”
“I should have stopped it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
Aria backed away.
The marriage suddenly looked different again.
Her father’s debt had not brought Lucian to her.
Lucian had brought the debt.
Perhaps indirectly.
Perhaps unintentionally.
But he had opened the door.
Aria removed her wedding ring.
Lucian stared at it.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“I know.”
“You are not safe.”
“I’ll decide what I am.”
“Aria.”
She placed the ring on his desk.
“You promised my choices would remain mine.”
Lucian looked as though she had struck him.
“Yes.”
“Then prove it.”
He could have stopped her.
He had guards.
Cars.
Power.
A contract.
Instead, Lucian stepped aside.
Aria walked out.
She returned to her old apartment with Carlos stationed reluctantly across the street.
For two days, Lucian did not call.
On the third morning, Aria found an envelope beneath her door.
Inside was the original marriage contract.
Across every page was a red stamp.
VOID.
There was also a signed document forgiving Thomas Bennett’s entire debt regardless of whether Aria ever returned.
No conditions.
No custody claim.
No obligation.
Nothing.
Only a handwritten note.
You were right. Your choices should have been yours from the beginning. Now they are. — L
Aria sat on the floor and cried.
Then her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
“Hello?”
Her father’s voice whispered from the other end.
“Aria, don’t tell Lucian I called.”
“Dad? Where are you?”
“I found out what Matteo is planning.”
“What?”
Thomas sounded terrified.
“The message about your baby wasn’t meant to make Lucian leave you.”
Aria gripped the phone.
“Then what was it meant to do?”
“To make him question whether the child should inherit.”
“Why?”
“Because Matteo knows something about Lucian’s first baby.”
Aria went still.
“What could he possibly know?”
Thomas took a shaking breath.
“That she didn’t die six days after she was born.”
May you like
The line went dead.
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