2026-09-11 20:23:34Stacy was still stunning at forty. Money and rest and careful living had kept her looking closer to twenty eight, and fame had only added a shine that made men everywhere fall over themselves for a chance with her.
Lucien Legion had never expected her to just confess to whatever she'd been hiding. But he trusted the tests. Three separate labs. DNA didn't care about her name or her fans. Stacy tilted her head at him, amused. "What's wrong with you? Since when did you turn insecure?" A small laugh escaped her. "You're underestimating yourself. And you're underestimating me." "Maybe." Lucien Legion kept his eyes locked on hers, steady and cold. "But the more I sit here, the more sure I am that you've been sleeping with someone else this whole time." The smile dropped off her face like it had never been there. "What kind of nonsense is that?" Her voice sharpened, each word clipped. "A joke's only funny for so long, Lucien Legion. Don't push it, or I'm actually going to get angry." That was all the confirmation he needed. She wasn't going to admit anything unless it was staring her in the face. "Stacy." His patience ran out. "Then explain this." He pulled the crumpled paternity report from his bag and slid it across the table. She picked it up. Her eyes scanned the page, and the smile that had been frozen on her lips finally cracked and vanished completely. For one second her gaze sharpened into something Lucien Legion had never seen aimed at him before. But there was no panic in her face. No guilt. No fear at all. She calmly tore the paper in half, folded it, and tore it again. "What is this supposed to be." She dropped the pieces on the table, her voice flat and cold. "Some kind of sick joke? Because it isn't funny." Lucien Legion didn't move. He'd expected the denial. He had no patience left to argue in circles with her. "You know how many times I ran that test?" His voice stayed low and even. "Three times. Three different labs. Every single one came back exactly the same." He stared straight into her eyes. "Chloe is not my daughter." His jaw tightened until it ached. "She's another man's kid." "Lucien Legion, you—" Stacy's whole expression shifted. The warmth drained out completely, replaced by the same icy authority she used on people who dared cross her. "You went behind my back and did this?" Lucien Legion almost laughed out loud. You cheated on me and let me raise another man's child for fifteen years, and somehow I'm the one in the wrong for finding out? He didn't back down an inch. "Chloe's fifteen." His voice cracked slightly at the edges. "Add the pregnancy and that's sixteen years, Stacy. Sixteen years you've been lying to me." "Enough!" Her palm hit the table, sharp and loud. "Lucien Legion, I think all that drinking finally rotted your brain." She looked at him like he was something pathetic and small. "You're actually sitting there saying this with a straight face?" Her tone shifted into something commanding, the voice she used on assistants and directors and anyone who worked for her. "You're coming home with me right now. And until I say otherwise, you're not going anywhere." Something inside Lucien Legion finally snapped clean in half. "What exactly do you think I am." His voice came out low and rough. "Some dog you can whistle for whenever it's convenient? Sit, stay, come home, good boy?" Her eyebrows drew together, caught off guard by the venom in it. Lucien Legion stood up slowly, his chair scraping back. "I'm not going back with you." His hands curled into fists at his sides. "In fact." The words stuck in his throat for a second. Sixteen years of marriage. Sixteen years of memories he used to be proud of. He forced it out anyway. "I want a divorce." Stacy froze completely. "A divorce?" For the first time all day, real shock broke through her composure. "Have you lost your mind?" The air around her turned cold in a way only years of being worshipped could produce, that natural pressure of a woman used to always getting her way. Lucien Legion didn't flinch. He just sat back down, face gone numb and blank, like a man who had already stopped caring what happened next. That blankness seemed to make her angrier than anything he could have shouted. Stacy grabbed her bag off the chair, spun on her heel, and stormed out, the door slamming hard enough to rattle the glasses on the table. The private room went silent. Lucien Legion finally let out the breath he'd been holding since he sat down. He stared at the wall across from him for a long moment. Sixteen years. All those ordinary Tuesday nights. All those birthdays and school pickups and quiet mornings he used to think were real. His eyes blurred without warning. One tear slid down his cheek and he didn't bother wiping it away. A few minutes later the door opened again. Lucien Legion looked up. Stacy had come back. The anger was gone from her face, smoothed over into something gentle, almost soft. "Lucien Legion." She walked over and sat back down across from him. "Apologize to me." Her eyes narrowed slightly, though her voice stayed calm. "Admit you said something stupid a minute ago." Her tone turned coaxing, almost sweet. "And don't you dare bring up divorce again." She reached across the table like she was smoothing over nothing more than a small argument between a normal husband and wife. "Promise me you'll cut back on the drinking too." "Do that, and I'll forget this whole thing happened." A faint smile crept back onto her lips. "We'll go home together. Everything will go right back to how it was before."
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92: Old Scandal
The reporter did not leave a message the first time. She simply called, asked whether she was speaking to Lucien Legion, and disconnected when he confirmed it.The second call came twenty minutes later.Lucien was standing beside a workbench at Vale Industrial, reviewing the final inspection notes for the contract he had signed the previous afternoon. His phone vibrated against the metal surface. The number was unfamiliar, but he answered.“Mr. Legion? My name is Vanessa Cole. I’m a journalist with The Daily Ledger. I’m preparing a feature about your recent engineering contract, and I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time.”Lucien glanced at the technician waiting across from him. “You can send your questions to the company’s communications office.”“I can, but there’s another part of your story that readers may find relevant.”“Then it probably isn’t about engineering.”There was a brief pause. “It concerns your divorce from actress Stacy Legion. And the child you’re reportedly exp
91: Contracts
Lucien arrived at Vale Industrial’s technical offices ten minutes before the scheduled meeting, carrying a folder of notes that had been marked, corrected, and reorganized twice on the journey.He had considered wearing his only suit. It had been pressed carefully the night before, but the shoulders no longer sat quite right, and the jacket carried the faint signs of years spent in storage between occasions that had never come. In the end, he chose a clean charcoal shirt and dark trousers. He would not pretend to be someone he wasn’t. If the company wanted his mind, he would give them that.At reception, a woman in a navy jacket checked his name against a list. Her eyes flickered briefly toward his hands, where a thin line of grease remained beneath one fingernail despite his efforts to scrub it away.“Mr. Legion, they’re expecting you. Please take the lift to the fourth floor.”No one smirked. No one asked whether he had come to repair a company car. The ordinary courtesy unsettled h
90: The Threat
The photograph lay on Clarice’s kitchen table long after the room had gone quiet.Lucien stood in the picture outside the engineering workshop, his sleeves pushed to his elbows and a dark smudge of grease crossing one wrist. He was looking toward someone beyond the frame, his expression unguarded in a way Clarice had rarely seen. Beneath it, the message had been typed in plain black letters.He will be your weakness.Clarice had read it so many times that the words had begun to blur. The threat was not loud. It did not need to be. Whoever had sent it knew enough about her to understand that Lucien had become more than a man helping her through a difficult season. He had become someone whose safety mattered to her in a way she could no longer dismiss.When Lucien returned from washing his hands, he found her still staring at the photograph.“You haven’t moved,” he said.Clarice looked up. “I’ve been thinking.”“That usually means you’ve decided to carry the whole world alone.”“Not the
89: The Answer
Clarice’s question remained between them long after she asked it.“Are you afraid of loving another child?”Lucien did not answer immediately. His gaze had settled on the open notebook on the table, on the neat rows of appointments and practical necessities he had written down as if careful planning could protect everyone involved. The room was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic beyond the windows.“You don’t have to answer me,” she said.“I do.”He finally looked at her. There was no anger in his expression, only exhaustion and a kind of reluctant honesty.“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid.”Clarice’s fingers tightened around the edge of the cushion. She had expected him to deny it, or to offer a carefully measured explanation that made fear sound like a temporary inconvenience. She had not expected the answer to come so plainly.“Because of Chloe?” she asked.“Because of what happened with Chloe. Because I spent years believing that being the
88: Pregnancy Changes Everything
The first thing Lucien Legion bought for his unborn child was a thermometer.Not a gold-plated crib. Not a designer stroller with a price tag that could have covered several months of rent. Not one of the extravagant gifts Clarice’s family seemed to believe could solve every problem money had ever caused.A thermometer.He stood in the pharmacy aisle, comparing two brands with the seriousness of a man reviewing engineering specifications. One had a larger display. The other had better reviews and a protective case. He read both labels, checked the warranty, then put the cheaper one in his basket.The pharmacist watched him with faint amusement. “First baby?”Lucien’s hand paused on the basket handle.“Yes,” he answered after a moment. “My first biological child.”The distinction escaped before he could stop it. The pharmacist’s expression softened, but Lucien did not invite sympathy. He paid, folded the receipt into his wallet, and left with a small paper bag that seemed almost absurd
87: His Fear
Edwin Lincoln did not return to his car immediately after Chloe left the café.He stood beside the window with one hand resting on the back of the chair she had occupied, watching her disappear into the afternoon crowd. The conversation kept replaying in fragments: her steady voice, the questions she had asked without raising it, the way she had looked at him as if she were trying to decide whether there was anything worth saving in him.He had expected anger. He had even prepared himself for tears. Anger could be answered with patience, and tears could be met with a carefully chosen apology. What he had not expected was that quiet, unmistakable disappointment.Chloe had not come looking for a famous director. She had come looking for the father who had allowed another man to raise her.And Edwin had failed her again.His phone vibrated in his pocket. A message from his assistant appeared on the screen, asking whether he was still attending the evening production meeting. Edwin ignore
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