Chapter 5 - The Face from the Past
I stood up slowly, stepping past Lily into the cramped, impeccably clean apartment. The air smelled faintly of chicken broth and rubbing alcohol.
Following the sound of the labored breathing, I pushed open the door to the bedroom.
A single bedside lamp cast a warm, golden glow across a narrow mattress. Lying propped up against a stack of pillows was a woman in her late twenties. Her face was dangerously pale, her cheeks hollow, and dark purple shadows bruised the skin beneath her eyes.
Yet, even through the ravages of illness and exhaustion, her features struck me like a physical blow.
The high cheekbones. The sharp, elegant jawline.
And those eyes.
My heart stuttered violently against my ribs—not from my condition, but from sheer, incomprehensible shock.
“Clara?” the word slipped past my lips before I even realized I was speaking.
The woman on the bed blinked, her heavy eyelids fluttering open as she squinted through the dim light to focus on my face. A look of absolute disbelief, followed by a wave of profound sorrow, washed over her pale features.
“Julian?” she whispered, her voice a fragile rasp. “No... no, I’m dreaming. Julian Moretti died ten years ago.”
“I didn't die,” I said, stepping closer to the bed, the ground feeling like it was slipping away beneath my feet. “I walked away. Or rather... my father made sure I walked away.”
Clara Bennett.
Ten years ago, she had been an art student working part-time in my family’s downtown gallery. We were young, fiercely in love, and convinced the world could be defied. But my father—a ruthless corporate patriarch who viewed relationships as business contracts—had discovered us. He didn't just disapprove; he systematically destroyed our lives. He fabricated embezzlement charges against Clara’s father, threatened to ruin her family completely, and told Clara that if she didn't disappear overnight, I would be disowned, prosecuted, and ruined.
To save me, Clara left a goodbye letter on my desk, packed a single suitcase, and vanished into the ether.
I searched for her for months until my father produced a forged death certificate, convincing me she had died in a car crash overseas. Broken and hollowed out, I threw myself into the family business, letting my father mold me into the cold, unfeeling machine I had become.
And now, a decade later, I was standing in a run-down Queens apartment, looking at the woman I had mourned for ten years—and the six-year-old child who had my eyes.
“She’s yours, Julian,” Clara whispered, tears finally breaking free and tracking down her hollow cheeks. She reached out a trembling hand toward Lily, who had slipped into the room and buried her face against her mother’s arm. “She was born six months after I left. I tried... God knows I tried to reach you, but your father’s security team kept me away. I couldn't risk her safety.”
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A cold, dark fury surged through my veins—a rage so intense it threatened to eclipse the pain in my chest.
My father had known. For ten years, he had known.
