Chapter 4 - The Citadel of Regret
The fallout inside Le Sel was swift, brutal, and entirely public.
Within twenty-four minutes of Luca Moretti breaking down in the middle of the Gold Coast’s most exclusive dining room, the incident had been captured on three separate smartphones, whispered to two gossip columnists, and relayed to the assignment desk of the Chicago Tribune.
By sunset, Moretti Global’s public relations department was in Defcon 1 crisis mode.
I didn't stick around to watch the empire scramble. The moment Luca had staggered back, choking on his own guilt as Evelyn stormed out of the restaurant behind him, I had grabbed my twins, tossed a hundred-dollar bill onto the table to cover our untouched lunch, and slipped out through the kitchen service corridor into a waiting cab.
We retreated to our suburban home—a modest, sunlit brick house with a sprawling oak tree in the front yard and a chalkboard fence in the backyard.
For the rest of that afternoon, I sat at our kitchen island, holding a mug of cold tea, watching Milo and Maya chase each other through the sprinkler on the lawn. They were laughing, entirely oblivious to the seismic shockwave that had just re-entered our lives.
To them, the man at the restaurant was just a weird stranger in a fancy suit who looked at them funny.
To me, he was a ghost who had finally realized he was haunting his own house.
I knew Luca wouldn't let it go. Men like Luca Moretti didn't walk away from lost assets—and in his mind, his own flesh and blood were the ultimate assets. The legal battles were coming. The injunctions, the private investigators, the high-priced attorneys threatening custody suits and emergency hearings.
I spent hours reviewing my savings, pulling up my legal retainer files, and preparing for war.
I just didn't expect the war to arrive in a single town car idling quietly by our curb at 8:15 PM.
There was no pounding on the door. No shouting. No flashing police lights or process servers thrusting manila envelopes into my hands.
Just a single soft knock.
When I opened the front door, the porch light caught the sharp, weary silhouette of Luca Moretti.
He had discarded his suit jacket. His silk tie was gone, his collar unbuttoned, and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked like a man who had spent the last six hours drinking heavily or staring at a wall in total, unmitigated despair.
He didn't try to push his way inside. He stood on the welcome mat, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, his dark eyes looking at me with a humility I had never seen in him during our entire marriage.
“Nia,” he said softly, his voice gravelly. “May I come in?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, leaning against the doorframe. “The kids are asleep upstairs, Luca. If you’re here to threaten a custody battle, let me save you the legal fees: my lawyer is already on speed dial, and I will tear your multi-billion-dollar empire down brick by brick before I let you walk into their lives and tear them apart.”
Luca flinched, closing his eyes for a long moment as my words landed like physical blows.
“I’m not here to threaten you,” he whispered, opening his eyes. They glistened with unshed tears. “I don't have a lawyer with me. I don't have an injunction. I came alone.”
“Why?”
“Because for the last six hours, I sat in my office downtown looking at empty walls,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “And for the first time in my life, I realized that every single thing I built—every skyscraper, every merger, every dollar in my bank accounts—is completely worthless.”
He took a slow step forward, stopping at the edge of the porch step, keeping a respectful distance.
“When I walked into that restaurant today,” Luca continued, his voice trembling, “and saw my eyes looking back at me from those two little faces... I wanted to die, Nia. I looked at what I threw away. I looked at the life I destroyed because I was too proud, too arrogant, and too cowardly to admit that maybe the broken piece in our marriage wasn't you. It was me.”
I stared at him, my heart aching with a toxic mixture of old love and unhealed scar tissue.
“You blamed me, Luca,” I said, the venom finally slipping out of my voice, replaced by a dull, aching exhaustion. “For years, I carried the guilt of infertility like a heavy stone around my neck. Every time I looked in the mirror, I thought my body was a failure. And all the while, you were letting people whisper behind my back, letting me shoulder a burden that was never mine alone to bear.”
“I know,” he choked out, dropping his head, his shoulders shaking slightly. “I let my pride poison everything. And when you left, I thought I was liberating us both. But I was just running away from my own failure.”
He looked up, meeting my eyes with a raw, desperate plea.
“I don't expect you to forgive me, Nia. I don't expect you to open the door and let me play happy families. I know what I broke.” He swallowed hard. “But please... don't keep them from me. Let me be in their lives. Supervised visits, legal agreements, whatever terms you want to set. I’ll sign away half my holdings right now. Just... let me look at them. Let me try to be a fraction of the father they deserve.”
The silence stretched between us, broken only by the chirping of crickets in the suburban grass.
I looked at the man who had once been my entire world—now humbled, broken, and begging for crumbs of grace at my front door.
“Evelyn still your wife, Luca?” I asked quietly.
A bitter, humorless smile touched his lips. “She packed her bags and left for her mother’s estate in Grosse Pointe three hours after we got back to the mansion. Our marriage was a corporate merger on paper, Nia. It died the second I saw my children in that restaurant.”
I let out a long, slow breath, looking out past him toward the empty street lamps shining down the quiet suburban road.
“You can see them, Luca,” I said finally.
Luca’s head snapped up, hope flashing wildly across his face.
“On my terms,” I added, my voice hardening into steel. “No lawyers dictating schedules. No secret paparazzi photos. No high-society games. You earn their trust as a stranger first. And if you ever—ever—make them feel the way you made me feel when you walked out on our marriage... I will vanish with them to the ends of the earth, and you will never find us again.”
May you like
Luca nodded rapidly, his eyes spilling over as he reached out, pressing his palm flat against the wooden doorframe right beside my hand, as if anchoring himself to the only real thing left in his world.
“I understand,” he whispered. “Thank you, Nia. Thank you for giving me a second chance I don't deserve.”
