Part 2

Dominic turned.

“What?”

“She disappears for five years, returns to your hotel with two children who happen to resemble you, and suddenly everyone is supposed to believe—”

“Stop.”

Dominic’s voice was calm.

That frightened Isabella more than anger would have.

I watched recognition pass between them.

There were currents in their relationship I did not understand.

Perhaps there always had been.

Isabella recovered quickly.

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“From what?”

She glanced at me.

“From being manipulated.”

I almost laughed.

Instead, I felt something colder.

Five years ago, she had used the same word.

Manipulative.

She had told Dominic I had manipulated him into marriage because of his family name.

She had told our friends I manipulated sympathy after our separation.

She had even told reporters that I had emotionally manipulated Dominic while carrying on an affair.

The affair had never existed.

The man whose name had been linked to mine, Daniel Harper, had been my childhood friend and my lawyer’s younger brother.

Dominic had never asked me for the truth.

Not once.

I looked at him now.

“They’re yours.”

The ballroom disappeared from his face.

There was no anger.

No disbelief.

There was only silence.

A profound, almost unbearable silence.

Dominic stared at the doorway through which the children had vanished.

“Mine.”

“Yes.”

He whispered their names as though committing them to memory.

“Eli.”

I nodded.

“And Lucy.”

His jaw trembled.

He looked away before anyone else could see it.

Unfortunately for him, I already had.

Isabella stepped closer.

“Dominic, anyone can say—”

“I know.”

He did not raise his voice.

“I know my own mother’s face.”

That silenced her.

Dominic’s mother, Elena, had died before our wedding.

Her portrait had hung in the Moretti study beneath warm afternoon light.

Lucy had her smile.

Not merely something similar.

It was the same crooked lift at the left corner, the same tiny dimple that appeared only when she was trying not to laugh.

Dominic turned to me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The pain in his question almost pulled me backward through time.

I remembered sitting alone in a doctor’s office with two heartbeats flickering on a dark monitor.

I remembered buying two tiny pairs of socks.

I remembered writing Dominic a letter at three in the morning.

I remembered waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

“I did.”

Dominic went still.

Isabella’s phone slipped slightly in her hand.

He stared at me.

“What?”

“I told you.”

“No.”

“I wrote to you.”

“You never contacted me.”

“I sent three letters.”

His brow furrowed.

I continued.

“The first one went to the penthouse.”

Nothing.

“The second went to your office.”

His gaze moved toward Isabella.

“The third was delivered by courier directly to Moretti Holdings.”

The ballroom seemed suddenly too warm.

Dominic looked at Isabella.

She shook her head immediately.

“I never saw anything.”

I had not accused her.

Not yet.

That made her answer more interesting.

Dominic noticed that too.

“When did she say you saw anything?”

Isabella froze.

“I assumed.”

“Why?”

“Because I worked in your office.”

Dominic stared at her.

“And handled my correspondence.”

“Along with six other people.”

He said nothing.

I should have felt satisfaction.

Instead, I felt tired.

This was not the reunion I had imagined during sleepless nights after the twins were born.

Actually, I had stopped imagining reunions years ago.

I had built a life around certainty.

Dominic did not know.

Dominic did not care.

Dominic had chosen someone else.

Those beliefs had been painful, but they had been stable.

Now stability was beginning to crack.

“I’m going back to work,” I said.

Dominic looked at me sharply.

“You can’t walk away after telling me I have two children.”

“I walked away five years ago.”

“That was different.”

“Yes.”

I met his eyes.

“It was easier.”

His expression shifted.

For once, he did not know how to answer.

I turned.

“Natalie.”

I stopped.

“If you sent those letters,” he said, “I never received them.”

I believed that he believed himself.

That frightened me more than if he had called me a liar.

I looked back at Isabella.

She was pretending to read something on her phone.

Her hand was trembling.

“I have copies,” I said.

Isabella looked up.

Dominic’s eyes narrowed.

“Copies of the letters?”

“And something else.”

I had not planned to tell him.

Until that moment, I had almost forgotten the envelope locked inside the old blue box beneath my bed.

It contained the reason I had finally stopped trying to contact him.

“What?” Dominic asked.

I thought about the document that had arrived two weeks after my third letter.

The one bearing the embossed letterhead of Dominic’s attorney.

The one that had convinced me he knew about the babies and wanted nothing to do with them.

“A response.”

Dominic stared at me.

“What response?”

I held his gaze.

“The one your lawyer sent me.”

His expression emptied.

“My lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“It said you acknowledged the pregnancy.”

Isabella stopped breathing.

I saw it.

“It said you surrendered all parental claims.”

Dominic’s voice became almost inaudible.

“I never did that.”

For the first time in five years, I felt the foundations of my own memories shift beneath me.

He stepped closer.

“Natalie, who signed that letter?”

I remembered the elegant black signature at the bottom.

I remembered crying over it until dawn.

I remembered tracing the familiar name with one finger.

“Your attorney at the time.”

Dominic’s eyes sharpened.

“Which attorney?”

I answered.

“Samuel Russo.”

Silence fell between us.

Dominic slowly turned toward Isabella.

Her surname was Russo.

Samuel Russo was her father.

And judging by the expression on her face, Isabella had been waiting five years for that name to return.

I did not sleep that night.

Neither, I suspected, did Dominic.

After the gala ended, I returned to the small townhouse in Queens that I had spent years turning into a home.

It was nothing like the penthouse where Dominic and I had once lived.

There were fingerprints on the refrigerator.

Crayons occupied a ceramic bowl that had originally been intended for fruit.

A cardboard castle stood permanently beneath the living room window because Lucy had declared it the capital of an imaginary country called Bellafina.

Eli’s toy dinosaurs frequently appeared inside shoes.

I loved every inch of it.

When I opened the door shortly after midnight, I found Maya asleep on the sofa with a book resting on her chest.

The television was muted.

Two tiny lamps glowed in the hallway.

I covered Maya with a blanket before checking the children.

Lucy slept diagonally across her bed, one foot hanging over the side.

Her rabbit was tucked beneath her chin.

Eli was curled beneath his blanket with his eyebrows slightly furrowed, as though even his dreams required serious consideration.

I stood between their beds.

For five years, I had believed that keeping Dominic away was the result of his own decision.

I had never told the children that their father rejected them.

I had simply said their father lived far away and that grown-up situations were sometimes complicated.

It had been the closest thing to truth I could offer.

Now I wondered whether even that explanation had been built on a lie.

I went downstairs.

The blue box was exactly where I had left it.

It was not actually valuable.

I had bought it at a flea market when I was twenty-three because I liked the faded painted birds on the lid.