Was it Marco?
The thought is sharp. Immediate. Violent.
Was he the one she was running from?
The air feels suddenly too thin. I replay the night on the plane with brutal clarity. Her stillness. Her fear of proximity. The way she grabbed my wrist without thinking when the plane dropped, like her body knew safety could exist, but only briefly. The way she looked at me afterward. Relief tangled with shame. Like she was already punishing herself for trusting the wrong man.
My jaw tightens. Because Marco is sitting ten feet in front of me. Because Marco has an ex who ran. Because Marco has always collected women like tokens and then acted surprised when they fled.
And because if it was him…
Then I didn’t just sleep with a stranger.
I slept with my son’s ex.
Without knowing. Without recognizing the pattern soon enough to stop it.
Something hot and ugly twists in my chest. Not jealousy. Rage. At him. At myself. At the fact that I have spent my life learning to read danger and still missed it when it was sitting beside me, wrapped in silence and bruises and fear.
Lucia lowers her head at the defendant’s table.
“Ms. Cannata,” the judge says. “Do you acknowledge Marco Mancini as the biological father of the child in question?”
Her answer is immediate. “No, Your Honor. He isnotthe father.”
Marco stiffens. Enzo leans closer to him, murmuring something meant to calm, to guide, to shape.
Marco’s attorney stands, smooth and confident. “We request court-ordered paternity testing to resolve the dispute.”
Standard. Predictable. Clean.
The judge nods. “Very well. DNA testing will be ordered for Mr. Mancini, Ms. Cannata, and the child.”
The child.
The word lands late.
Too late.
The hearing moves forward. Dates. Procedures. Two weeks for results. I don’t hear most of it. Because my mind has finally caught up to what my body already knows.
Three years. The child would be three. Which means…
The math aligns with brutal clarity. My breath stutters for the first time.
She stands the moment she’s released. She exits through the side door without looking back. Again.
I stay seated, letting the courtroom empty around me until the hum of the lights is the only sound left and my pulse feels too loud for the space it’s trapped in. Marco never said her name.Not once. He never said Cannata. He never said Lucia. He never said the woman he’d been with vanished three years ago.
Which means he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know about the flight. About the night that followed me into silence. About the woman sitting across from him whose child he’s trying to claim.
My hand rises to my ear without permission. I press hard this time. I don’t stop myself.
Because this is not stress. This is impact.
Lucia didn’t disappear from my life. She escaped it.
And she took my son with her.
I need to see the child. Not to claim. Not to confront. Toknow.
Because if the instinct that just split my world open is right, Marco has cut straight through the one line I never meant to cross.
