“Did you hurt his?”
She looked down. “Maybe.”
“Are we going to live with him?” Lucas asked.
“No. This is your home.”
Then her phone rang from a blocked number. Harrison.
“I need to see them,” he said.
“No.”
“They’re my children.”
“They are five-year-old boys who found out the truth in an airport because you couldn’t control yourself.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Once, that apology would have meant everything. Now it felt too small.
“They need time,” Chloe said.
“I’m not asking to take them. I’m asking to understand.”
Finally, she agreed to meet him the next day in a public park. One hour. No lawyers. No security. No Madeline.
“Madeline no longer works for me,” Harrison said coldly.
Chloe froze.
He had checked the archived security logs. Chloe had indeed come to his office five years earlier. She had stayed seventeen minutes before guards removed her on Madeline’s orders. Her calls had been redirected. Her emails filtered. Her letters destroyed.
“I told you,” Chloe whispered.
“I know,” Harrison said, and those two words carried more weight than any apology.
Then he asked about Julian Reyes—the man he had believed was Chloe’s lover.
“He wasn’t my lover,” Chloe said. “He was a genetic counselor.”
Her mother’s neurological disease might have been hereditary. Chloe had been getting tested before trying for children. The messages Harrison had found were about clinic appointments and results.
“You never let me explain,” she said.
He had seen phrases like “I can’t tell Harrison yet” and assumed betrayal. But the truth was fear. Chloe had been afraid she might carry a dangerous genetic marker.
“The results were negative,” she told him. “I was going to tell you that night. I bought baby shoes. The blue box on the table.”
Harrison whispered, “I threw it away.”
“I know.”
