Betrayed Broken Husband Becomes a Billionaire Daddy

2: Unexpected Night With Her

Lucien Legion had no idea how long he had slept.

When he finally cracked his eyes open, sunlight was pouring through tall windows, and the room around him looked far too expensive to be anywhere he actually knew. High ceiling. Thick curtains. A bed the size of a small boat.

He looked down.

He was completely naked under the sheets.

His stomach dropped. The pillows beside him were a mess, the blanket half on the floor, and it didn't take a genius to figure out something had happened here last night.

He pressed a hand against his throbbing skull and tried to remember.

He remembered the paternity test. He remembered driving with his hands shaking on the wheel. He remembered walking into a bar and ordering the first of what became a long line of drinks.

After that, nothing. A black hole where a night should have been.

Did I take some woman home from the bar?

The thought made him feel sick.

Then technically I cheated too, he thought bitterly. What does that make me, better than Stacy or exactly the same?

But another thought crawled in right behind it, colder and harder.

No. It's not the same. I already decided we're done. Whatever I do with my own life now is nobody's business but mine.

It wasn't much of an excuse, but it was enough to keep him from hating himself completely.

He tried to sit up and a spike of pain shot straight through his skull.

"Ugh." He dropped back against the pillow, jaw clenched, eyes shut tight.

Water was running somewhere close. A shower, maybe, or a sink.

Lucien Legion turned his head toward the sound just as the bathroom door opened.

Stacy stepped out, hair damp, wrapped in one of the hotel robes.

Lucien Legion froze.

His mind went blank for a second and then filled right back up with dread. Did she catch me here? Did she walk in and find me with someone else?

A short, bitter laugh almost escaped him. You lied to me for years, Stacy, and I never suspected a thing. The one time I mess up drunk out of my mind, you're standing right here to see it. How is that fair.

He stared at her, waiting for the explosion, the accusations, something.

Instead Stacy smiled, warm and easy, like nothing in the world was wrong. "Look who's finally awake."

She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. "You drank way too much last night. Then you kept me up until almost sunrise." Her voice dipped into something gently scolding. "You're forty years old, Lucien Legion. You can't keep doing this to your body."

She reached over and smoothed his hair back from his forehead, her palm cool against his skin. "I had broth sent up for you. Sit up and drink some before it gets cold."

Lucien Legion blinked at her, thrown completely off balance. No anger. No suspicion. Just her fussing over him like a devoted wife.

"How did I get here." His voice came out rough. "And how did you get here."

Pieces of the night flickered at the edges of his memory, an underground garage, concrete pillars, the certainty that he had ended up somewhere Stacy owned in secret. None of it matched this room.

"You texted me." Stacy's mouth curved, amused. "Begged me to come, actually. I didn't think you'd be that far gone." Her cheeks colored faintly. "And once I got here, you were like a completely different man. You didn't hold back at all."

She leaned in closer, her voice dropping soft and teasing. "Next time you want to be that wild, give me some warning first. You're going to hurt me if you keep surprising me like that."

Her eyes were bright with satisfaction, her whole face carrying the flush of a woman who had thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Lucien Legion's stomach turned over.

He grabbed his phone off the nightstand with a shaking hand.

There it was. A message sent from his own number to Stacy, timestamped well past midnight.

He stared at the screen like it belonged to a stranger.

He had been too drunk to stand up straight. And somehow he had managed to text his wife, book a hotel room, and spend half the night with her?

None of it lined up.

Still. He exhaled slowly and set the phone down.

Fine. This is the last time. The absolute last time we ever share a bed as husband and wife.

He got up, dressed, washed his face in cold water until his head cleared a little, and checked them both out at the front desk.

That was when something else caught his attention.

The room had been booked under his own name, paid in cash.

Lucien Legion asked the clerk if he could see last night's security footage.

The young man behind the desk shook his head, apologetic. "I'm sorry, sir, we can't release that. Guest privacy policy." He hesitated, then added, "I can tell you the woman who brought you in had short blond hair, if that helps."

Lucien Legion went still.

Short blond hair.

Stacy's hair was long and dark, down to the middle of her back. It had never once been short. Never once been blond.

He opened his mouth to press further, but Stacy was already tugging gently at his sleeve, urging him toward the door with a soft laugh about being hungry. He glanced back at the front desk one more time before he let her pull him outside.

They ended up at a restaurant a few blocks over, tucked into a private back room. Stacy ordered a platter of oysters along with the rest of the meal, insisting he needed to build his strength back up after the night he'd apparently given her.

Lucien Legion had no appetite at all.

He picked at his plate for a minute, then set down his fork and pulled his phone back out, scrolling to the message again.

I've been drinking. Don't want to go home tonight. Been forever since we did it in a hotel. Come over. Let's relive the old days.

He read it three times.

The longer he looked at it, the more certain he became.

He would never have written that. Not after what he'd found out. Not in a hundred years.

Across the table, Stacy noticed him staring off and smiled, nudging the oyster platter closer to him. "Eat up. You've still got plenty of stamina in you, but you're not twenty five anymore. Pace yourself if you want to keep this going for another twenty years."

Lucien Legion didn't answer the joke.

He studied her instead, the woman across the table, still stunning after all these years, the kind of beautiful he had never once gotten tired of looking at. If he hadn't found that piece of paper yesterday, he probably would have spent the rest of his life exactly this obsessed with her.

That thought only made the ache in his chest worse.

After a long silence he finally said, "Stacy."

"Hm?" She glanced up, an oyster shell in her hand.

"You're beautiful. You're famous. Men must throw themselves at you constantly."

"Of course they do." She said it lightly, without a trace of concern, and kept eating with the same easy grace she always carried.

Lucien Legion's chest tightened.

He looked straight at her. "Have you ever cheated on me."

She paused mid bite. Then she looked up and smiled, like the question was almost cute. "What's this about? Since when did you get insecure?" She shook her head, a small laugh escaping her. "You're underestimating yourself." Her smile softened, her eyes settling on his with total confidence. "And you're underestimating me."

Lucien Legion said nothing.

He reached into his bag, pulled out the folded paternity test, and set it down on the table between them.

"Then explain this."