Chapter 3 - THE PAST UNCOVERED
The confidential dossier arrived at 6:00 AM precisely.
Luca sat at his massive mahogany desk, the morning sun casting long, golden shadows across the penthouse study.
He opened the heavy manila envelope with trembling fingers.
Photographs spilled out first.
Pictures of the twins playing in a sunlit Chicago park.
A little boy named Leo laughing as he chased a pigeon.
A little girl named Maya sitting cross-legged under an oak tree, reading a book twice her size.
Then came the birth certificates.
Date of birth: October 14th, five years ago.
Calculated backward, conception had occurred precisely during the final month of his marriage to Nia.
Right around the time Luca was spending eighty hours a week at headquarters.
Right around the time he had started sleeping in the guest suite.
Right around the snowy evening he told her he didn't love her anymore.
Luca’s hands shook as he turned to the medical reports from St. Jude’s Hospital.
He scanned the gynecological evaluations.
There were no abnormalities noted.
No permanent infertility.
In fact, the doctor’s notes explicitly stated that natural conception was entirely possible with reduced stress.
Reduced stress.
Luca let out a hollow, broken laugh that sounded nothing like him.
Her stress had been him.
The late nights.
The cold silences.
The unspoken accusations hanging in the air like poison gas.
Once he walked out of that penthouse, her body—free from the crushing pressure of his disappointment—had naturally done what they spent years praying for.
She had gotten pregnant almost immediately after leaving him.
Luca kept reading, his eyes landing on a supplementary report regarding the fertility clinic visits they had attended together.
A secondary note caught his attention.
An internal memo from Dr. Sterling’s clinic, flagged by an administrative auditor years later.
It appeared that certain lab results belonging to Luca had been altered.
Altered to suggest low motility and structural anomalies.
Altered so that the blame would permanently rest on Nia’s shoulders.
Luca stood up so fast his leather chair crashed backward onto the Persian rug.
“Marcus,” he whispered, the name tasting like poison.
Only one man had access to his private medical portal during his annual executive health screenings.
Only one man had the motive to keep Luca childless, vulnerable, and fiercely tied to the corporate machine.
Marcus Vance.
The man who had stood beside him at every press conference.
The man who managed his schedule, his appointments, and his inner circle.
Luca walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows, his reflection staring back at him with the face of a fool.
He had sacrificed his marriage, his wife, and his future children on the altar of corporate ambition and a fabricated lie.
And now, the bill had come due.
He wasn't just going to confront Marcus.
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He was going to dismantle everything Marcus had built.
But first, he had to face Nia.
