“Lucia?” my lawyer says. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m here.”
“Okay. We need to make a plan.”
A plan. Plans are what I do. Plans are what I built my life on. Lists. Routes. Backup routes. Cash tucked in shoes. Burner phones. Schedules that keep my fear from turning into chaos.
I stare at Nico on the rug, so small and earnest, moving a yellow car one millimeter to the left because it feels wrong to him otherwise.
“How soon is the hearing?” I ask.
He tells me the date. My chest tightens with the countdown. We talk in circles. Options. Motions. Travel. What I can afford. What he can file.
Everything sounds like paper. None of it sounds like safety.
When I hang up, my kitchen is too quiet. The heater clicks. The fridge hums. The world keeps being normal as if my life hasn’t just been cracked open with a stamp and a signature.
I look at the envelope again. My fingers move before I decide to let them. I pick up my phone, and I call Marco.
He answers immediately, like he’s been waiting with his finger on the screen.
“Well,” he says, all smooth and pleased. “There she is.”
I go cold. “You know he’s not yours,” I say. No greeting. No cushioning. The truth is the only weapon I have, even though he’s already proven truth doesn’t matter to him.
Marco laughs. It’s small. Almost affectionate. Like I’m being cute. “Prove it.”
“You forged documents,” I snap.
“Allegedly,” he says, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Bring it up in court.”
My hand tightens around the phone so hard, my knuckles ache. “You don’t want him,” I say, because I need him to admit it. “You don’t even know him.”
“I want what’s mine.”
“He’s not?—”
“Then come,” Marco cuts in, irritation slipping through. “Bring the kid. Let’s see what the judge says when you’re sitting there, looking guilty.”
My throat burns. “Why are you doing this?” I whisper.
There’s a pause. Not because he’s thinking. Because he wants me to feel the pause. Because he wants me to wait for him like I used to. Like my breathing belongs to his timing.
“Because I can,” he says finally. “Because you ran. Because you used my family’s money to disappear and thought you’d won.”
My stomach drops so hard, it feels like a free fall. “I didn’t?—”
“You think you’re better than us,” he continues cruelly. “You think you get to raise a Mancini heir in hiding.”
Heir.
My blood turns to ice. The word is wrong in his mouth. Twisted. Possessive.
“You don’t get to decide that,” he says. “We do.”
The line goes dead. I stare at my phone for a second too long, the silence buzzing like a live wire.
Then I move. Because if I stop moving, I’ll start shaking. And shaking is dangerous. Shaking makes you drop things. Makes you cry. Makes you look weak.
