Chapter 3

Clara's POV

Once Leo's fever came down, I processed his discharge papers. Instead of heading home, I followed the address my mother had mentioned over the phone.

The cab took us further out, finally pulling up outside a gated community of private mansions on the east side.

Holding my child, I asked the gate guard for directions to the deepest house in the estate—Vincent Pierce's manor.

I rang the doorbell.

A maid wearing an apron opened the door, sizing me up. "Who are you looking for?"

Before I could speak, a woman emerged from the foyer. She wore an off-white silk dress, her right arm hanging limply at her side. It was Lorelei Vance.

Right behind her, my mother hurried out from under the covered terrace holding a cleaning rag, the sleeves of her worn gray work shirt rolled up to her elbows. The moment she saw me, she almost dropped the rag. "Clara? What are you doing here? I'm just lending a hand, don't think too much into it."

Lorelei's eyes locked onto Leo in my arms, lingering for a long moment. Her brow furrowed slightly, as if the child looked familiar.

I took the rag from my mother's hand, threw it onto the marble steps, and grabbed her arm to drag her away.

I said only one word: "Home."

Lorelei's voice drifted from behind us. "Are you coming back tomorrow?"

My mother turned to answer, but my sharp tug made her stumble.

I walked fast. Leo had his head rested on my shoulder, having fallen asleep again.

My mother jogged behind me, opening her mouth several times. "Clara, I just wanted to earn a little extra for the family..."

I didn't answer.

Standing at the bus stop, I watched the oncoming traffic and pieced the clues together in my mind.

He booked that two-week vacation to get me out of the way.

He sent my mother to the Pierce manor to scrub his real wife's floors.

My child had long since been registered under Lorelei's name, with the transfer paperwork only awaiting her signature.

With one hand, he had quietly trapped my entire family, and we were expected to be grateful to him.

That evening, my mother said she had no appetite, but I still brought her and Leo to a nice restaurant inside an upscale shopping mall, wanting the boy to have something warm and light to eat.

Barely ten minutes after we sat down, a sudden cheer broke out across the dining room.

Patrons crowded toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, someone laughing excitedly. "Today is the Pierce family heir's wedding anniversary! He gifted his wife a limited-edition supercar, parked right down in the plaza!"

At a window table across the room, Vincent sat in a sharp black suit, placing a set of car keys into Lorelei's palm.

Lorelei smiled and leaned against his shoulder. He tilted his head to whisper something in her ear, drawing another round of applause and cheers from the surrounding crowd.

My fingers tightened into fists.

Every single year on this exact date, he had told me he was stuck on a construction deadline and couldn't come home.

The first three times, I believed him without a second thought.

This year, I saw it with my own eyes. He wasn't working at all; he was spending the day at another woman's table.

This was the fourth year.

My mother recognized the man at that table too. Her hand shaking uncontrollably, she dragged me toward the emergency exit stairs. "Clara... isn't that Vincent? And the woman beside him... is that the lady from this afternoon? Tell me the truth, what is going on here?!"

Only a single emergency bulb lit the stairwell. I leaned my back against the cold wall. "Mom... he and I never filed for a marriage certificate."

My mother's voice spiked. "Never filed? Then what was that wedding banquet back home?! All our relatives and neighbors were there!"

"It was just an expensive dinner he bought for everyone," I said, my voice deadpan. "He already had a wife. It's the woman beside him right now—Lorelei Vance."

My mother stared at me, struggling for words before finally choking out, "Then... what about Leo?"

"Leo's birth registry lists Lorelei as his legal mother," I said. "Even at his preschool, she's registered as his mother."

My mother supported herself against the wall, utterly speechless. Suddenly, she raised her hand and slapped herself across the face with a loud crack.

"I was blind! I was an absolute fool! I actually went and scrubbed her floors for days!"

She raised her hand to strike herself again, but I seized her wrist.

I had planned to keep everything hidden until our flight tickets and foreign documents were ready, intending to simply tell her, *We're moving abroad.*

I failed to protect her from the truth. My mother had to learn it right under the dim emergency light of a building where Vincent was wining and dining his wife.

I had intended to bear this humiliation entirely on my own, but now my mother was crushed under its weight too.

We stood in that stairwell for a long time.

By the time we returned to our table, our food was still steaming, but Leo was gone.

I stopped a passing server. The server recalled, "Earlier, a lady in a white dress said she was a friend of the boy's mother. She saw the little boy crying alone in the hallway and offered to help him find his mom."

I bolted down the corridor toward Vincent's table.

Just as I rounded the corner, I saw Lorelei holding Leo's hand, leading him toward Vincent.

Lorelei was smiling. "Vincent, I saw this sweet boy crying all alone in the hallway. When I asked for his mother's name, he wouldn't say. Poor little thing."

Leo looked up, saw Vincent sitting at the table, wrenched his tiny hand free from Lorelei, and stumbled forward. He threw his arms around Vincent's leg and cried out, "Daddy!"

The entire table fell completely silent.

Lorelei's hand remained frozen in midair, forgotten.

The gazes of the entire restaurant snapped toward them in an instant.

I stood frozen at the entrance of the hallway, terrified to take another step forward.

My son's cry was real. In the past, he had only ever called him that through video calls.

And today, my son had been delivered straight into the hands of the other woman.

Hearing that cry of "Daddy," Vincent's face darkened instantly.

His eyes darted across the dining room full of guests, never once looking down at the child clinging to his knee.