Chapter 8
I answered.
“Yes.”
The word sounded unfamiliar in my own mouth.
Not because I had never wanted children.
Because fatherhood had been turned into something happening somewhere else without me.
Nico asked my name.
“Cassian.”
He repeated it badly.
I almost laughed.
Then he asked if I was coming.
“Yes.”
Margaret interrupted gently.
“Not tonight.”
My instinct rejected that immediately.
Then I heard fear in her voice.
Not resistance.
Protection.
Elena heard it too.
“We won’t take him without preparing him.”
Margaret cried again.
“Thank you.”
That was the moment I understood how deeply Vivienne’s damage spread.
She had made decent people afraid that returning my own son to me might be dangerous because she had spent three years defining who I was without my participation.
We arranged the next morning.
Neutral Morelli property.
No capos.
No spectacle.
Just Elena, me, Matteo, Margaret, and Nico.
Before we ended the call, Nico whispered:
“Mommy?”
Elena pressed the phone to her ear.
“Yes?”
“Do you know Isla?”
Everything inside us stopped.
Elena looked at me.
“How do you know Isla?”
“Grandpa showed me.”
Matteo went pale.
I turned.
“You visited him.”
He said nothing.
Margaret spoke carefully through the phone.
“Matteo came twice a year.”
Elena looked at him.
He lowered his eyes.
“I brought photographs.”
“You let my son see his sister but told neither child the truth?”
“I was trying to keep them connected.”
“You were keeping them apart.”
He accepted that.
“Yes.”
No excuse.
At least he knew.
We ended the call.
Then I looked at Tristan.
“Your mother knew Matteo visited.”
He shook his head.
Matteo answered.
“No.”
Vivienne did not know.
That mattered.
Something had survived outside her control.
Two children who knew the other existed before their parents did.
Then Matteo reached into a locked drawer.
He removed a small envelope.
“Vivienne doesn’t know about this either.”
Inside was a photograph.
Elena pregnant.
Me beside her.
Taken months before she disappeared.
On the back, Matteo had written:
YOUR PARENTS DIDN’T ABANDON YOU.
I looked at him.
“You knew one day Nico would ask.”
“Yes.”
“So you prepared the truth.”
“I prepared one sentence.”
He looked ashamed.
“I should have done more.”
May you like
He should have.
We all had different versions of that sentence waiting for us now.
