He accepts the answer instantly, because he trusts me in a way I don’t deserve right now. He goes back to his rows.
I fold the papers with shaking fingers and slide them back into the envelope like I can hide them from the air. My hands are trembling. Not dramatic trembling. Fine, fast, invisible-to-everyone-else trembling. The kind that lives in the muscles and makes you feel like a glass held too tightly.
I call my lawyer. He is not my lawyer in the sense that I chose him. He’s the man I could afford. The man whose office smells like stale coffee and paper and defeat. The man who talks fast because he has too many cases and not enough time to care about any of them properly.
He answers on the third ring. “Lucia,” he says, and he already sounds tired. “Yeah. I saw the filing come through.”
Of course he did.
“You saw it,” I repeat, like hearing it out loud will make it less like a nightmare.
“Yes.” Paper rustles. A sigh that’s too practiced. “This is… very aggressive.”
“It’s Marco,” I say. I don’t say his last name. I can’t. My throat refuses.
“Right.” Another pause. “Okay. Listen to me. You have to appear.”
My stomach flips hard, the way it does when you miss a step. “What if I don’t?” I ask, even though I already know. I need him to say it, anyway. I need someone else to confirm reality.
“If you don’t appear,” he says carefully, “the court can enter a default judgment. That means…”
“He gets custody,” I whisper.
He doesn’t correct me. That’s the worst part.
“They can,” he says. “At minimum, it creates a huge problem. You look uncooperative. You look like you’re hiding something.”
I laugh once, a sound that isn’t humor. “I am hiding something.”
I hear him inhale like he wants to ask. He doesn’t. He doesn’t want details. He wants the simplest version that fits his paperwork.
“What about DNA?” I ask, voice too tight. “We can prove he’s not?—”
“They’ll order a test,” he says. “And if he’s not the father, that helps you.”
Helps me. Like help is a clean thing.
“And then?”
Silence. Long enough that my skin prickles.
“And then,” he says slowly, “they will ask who the father is.”
There it is. The second trap inside the first. Because the DNA will prove Marco isn’t Nico’s father.
But it won’t stop the question.
And I can’t answer it without detonating everything.
If I lie, I risk perjury. I risk looking unstable. I risk losing Nico because I’m “untrustworthy.”
If I tell the truth, I name a man with power. A man who isn’t Marco and still belongs to that world. A man whose name makes rooms go quiet. A man who could claim Nico with one phone call if he wanted to.
And if the court learns Nico is his? Then Nico becomes visible.
And visible is not safe.
I press my palm to the counter hard, like pressure can keep me from floating apart.
