Chapter 3 - Blood Doesn't Lie
Dominic did not sleep. By six in the morning, his private jet was not fueled, nor was he reviewing market shares. He was sitting in the back of a black tinted Escalade parked across from a small, red-brick brownstone in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
Through the rain-streaked window, he watched the front door open.
Natalie stepped out, dressed in an oversized beige trench coat, carrying a pink lunchbox and a blue superhero backpack. Behind her came the children. Oliver had his hood pulled up, holding his sister’s hand with an instinctual protectiveness that struck Dominic like a physical blow. Mia was skipping, jumping over puddles on the wet pavement, her laughter drifting faintly across the quiet residential street.
They weren't living in abject poverty, but it was a world away from the gilded penthouses of Manhattan. Natalie was doing it alone. She didn't have a nanny escorting them; she didn't have a chauffeur waiting at the curb. She was walking them to the corner elementary school three blocks away.
Dominic reached for the door handle.
“Boss,” his head of security, Marcus, murmured from the front seat. “You step out there now, you’re going to cause a scene. The neighbors are out. School drop-off is twenty minutes long.”
“I don't care,” Dominic rasped.
“You care about how those kids see you,” Marcus said bluntly. He had worked for Dominic’s father; he was the only man alive allowed to talk to Dominic like that. “You roll in there like the grim reaper with private security, you'll terrify them. Let the lady drop them off. Talk to her when she's alone.”
Dominic sat back against the leather seat, forcing his breathing to slow down. Marcus was right. Oliver had looked at him last night with defensive hostility. A boy that young shouldn't know how to look at a stranger like that—unless he had grown up knowing his mother was constantly fighting the world by herself.
Twenty minutes later, Natalie walked back down the block alone, her hands stuffed into her coat pockets, her head bowed against the morning drizzle. As she reached the bottom of her front steps, Dominic stepped out of the vehicle.
“Natalie.”
She froze, her spine instantly straightening. She turned slowly, her expression weary rather than surprised.
“You’re trespassing on private property, Dominic.”
“The sidewalk belongs to the city,” he said quietly, walking toward her with his hands visible, palms open in an uncharacteristic gesture of surrender. “I'm not here to threaten you. I'm not here with lawyers.”
“Then why are you here?”
Dominic reached into the inner pocket of his charcoal overcoat and pulled out the charred white envelope. He held it out to her.
Natalie looked down at it. For the first time, her stoic facade cracked. Her eyes widened, a flicker of raw agony crossing her face before she bit her lower lip.
“I found it last night,” Dominic said, his voice breaking on the edge. “In my safe. Isabella told me it was junk mail. I never opened it, Natalie. I swear to you before God, I never saw this until six hours ago.”
Natalie let out a bitter, breathy laugh that held no humor at all. “And that excuses you? That because you let another woman filter your life, your conscience is clear?”
“No!” Dominic took a desperate step closer. “It makes me a fool! It makes me the biggest coward on this earth! But I didn't throw you out knowing you were carrying my children. You have to believe that. Whatever you think of me, Natalie, I would have torn Manhattan apart before I let my own flesh and blood grow up without me!”
“You tore me apart instead!” she shouted, her voice echoing down the wet, quiet street. Tears finally welled in her eyes, hot and angry. “You sat in that office and told me I was a thief! You believed a stack of forged server logs over four years of marriage! You let Isabella Russo walk into my home and pack my belongings while you hid behind your legal team!”
“I was wrong,” Dominic whispered.
The words fell between them like lead. In all their years together, through every corporate crisis and private disagreement, Dominic Moretti had never uttered those three words to anyone.
Natalie wiped her eyes furiously with the sleeve of her coat. “It’s too late, Dominic. They don't know who you are. They think their father was a sailor who died overseas. I gave them a hero to remember instead of a monster who discarded their mother like trash.”
A cold pain lanced through Dominic’s chest. “You told them I was dead?”
“I told them what they needed to hear to sleep at night,” she spat back. “And now you’re going to get back in your car and leave us alone.”
“I need a test,” Dominic said, his jaw tightening with renewed determination. “Not because I doubt you. Because the Moretti board will move against you the second they smell this. My uncle, the investors—they will try to claim you fabricated this for money. Give me a swab. Let me protect their inheritance legally before the wolves start circling.”
Natalie looked at him for a long, agonizing moment. She saw the dark circles under his eyes, the absolute absence of his usual arrogance.
May you like
“One condition,” Natalie said coldly. “We use my independent clinic. And until those results come back, you stay one hundred yards away from Oliver and Mia. If you break that, Dominic, I take them and disappear where all your billions won't ever find us.”
“Agreed,” Dominic said instantly.
