dress.
Victor noticed and looked away.
Seven years earlier, he had knelt in the kitchen of their first apartment and pressed his ear against her stomach during their first pregnancy. He had talked to that baby every night.
They lost the pregnancy at fourteen weeks.
Afterward, Victor packed the unused crib into storage and never mentioned it again. Lena attended counseling alone. He worked later, traveled more often, and began treating grief as a weakness that belonged exclusively to her.
The twins had come after two years of fertility appointments, injections, procedures, and one failed embryo transfer.
Victor had attended the successful transfer. He had held Lena’s hand and cried when the doctor showed them two flickering heartbeats.
Now he spoke about the children as though they were a disputed expense.
“Strike the section,” Lena said.
Victor’s expression hardened. He needed the divorce completed before morning, when his public-relations team planned to announce his engagement to Camille Rowe.
Camille was elegant, ambitious, and skilled at turning private damage into polished headlines. For six months, she had assured reporters that Victor and Lena had separated respectfully.
Lena learned about the affair from a hotel receipt found inside Victor’s coat.
The date matched the night he claimed he was trapped in New York by a snowstorm.
He had actually been at a lake resort two hours from Chicago.
Victor checked his watch again. “Fine. Remove it.”
His attorney drew a line through Section Fourteen. All four of them initialed the deletion.
The silver pen was placed before Lena.
“Sign,” Victor said.
She looked at the line beneath her printed name.
“Are you still planning to deny the twins are yours?”
Naomi turned sharply toward Victor.
His face remained composed. “I’m requesting confirmation after delivery.”
“We went through IVF together.”
“And you began meeting Rafael Mercer without telling me.”
“I met him twice to review the foundation reports you refused to show me.”
The name changed the air in the room.
Rafael Mercer had once been Victor’s closest friend, cofounder, and chief engineer. Where Victor cultivated investors, Rafael earned the loyalty of builders, inspectors, and young engineers. He was calm in emergencies and indifferent to status.
Victor could attract every eye in a room.
Rafael could make everyone stop talking.
Four years earlier, a major Sloane Meridian project fell months behind schedule. Victor blamed Rafael publicly and forced him out of the company. Lena had accepted her husband’s version of events.
She later discovered that Victor had ordered cheaper materials, ignored Rafael’s objections, and concealed the resulting redesign from investors.
By then, Rafael had founded Mercer Structural and rebuilt his reputation without Victor.
Victor never forgave him for succeeding.
“Rafael reviewed two sets of data,” Lena said. “That does not make him the father of my children.”
Victor leaned forward. “Sign the papers, Lena. Unless you want every appointment, private message, and hotel record examined in court.”
Naomi’s voice sharpened. “That sounded like a threat.”
“It was practical advice.”
Lena picked up the pen.
Her hand trembled, but not because she doubted what she had to do.
She remembered the man Victor had been when they shared rent, takeout dinners, and impossible plans. She remembered helping him prepare his first investor presentation while he slept at the kitchen table. She remembered correcting the
