Chapter 1 - The Black Folder on the Marble Table
My ex pointed at my pregnant stomach in a crowded Manhattan bakery and laughed.
“You really let yourself go, Chloe.”
His fiancée giggled. Strangers stared. No one moved.
Derek thought he was humiliating the woman he had discarded. He had no idea the child beneath my heart belonged to Dante Cassano—or that Dante had just walked through the door carrying a black folder with Derek’s name on it.
Four months earlier, Derek had ended our six-year relationship over dessert at Le Bernardin and told me, in a voice polished for cruelty, that “presentation matters” around the people he did business with. I had paid his phone bill when he was unemployed, bought his first serious watch by maxing out two credit cards, and stood beside him through every rejection. Once Channing Capital started appearing in business magazines, he began treating me like a liability from his poor years.
Now he blocked my path at Balthazar, his eyes on the curve of my dress.
“It’s a good thing I left when I did,” he said loudly. “I could never bring someone who looks like this to a board dinner.”
Then the brass doors opened.
Three men in dark suits entered first. Behind them came Dante Cassano in a midnight-blue suit, storm-gray eyes fixed on Derek. An older man carrying a black folder followed him.
Dante stopped when he saw me. His gaze moved from my face to my stomach, then to Derek’s smirk.
“What did you say to her?” he asked.
Derek tried to recover. “Private conversation.”
“No,” Dante said. “You made sure everyone heard.”
The older man set the black folder on a marble table.
Gold letters stamped across it read:
CHANNING CAPITAL
Derek’s face changed.
Dante came to stand in front of me, but his voice softened.
“Chloe,” he said, “I searched for you after I got back.”
My throat tightened. “Your number was disconnected.”
“It was changed while I was overseas. Your letters never reached me.”
Then his eyes dropped to my stomach.
For the first time, the most feared man in the room looked uncertain.
“Is the child mine?”
I nodded.
Dante closed his eyes for one brief second. When he opened them again, the uncertainty was gone.
He rested one hand on the folder and looked at Derek.
“Good,” he said quietly. “Then we can deal with both things you stole from her.”
May you like
The lawyer opened the folder.
And Derek lunged for it.
