2026-09-11 20:25:02Lucien Legion stayed exactly where he was.
"I'm not apologizing." His voice was quiet but there was no give in it at all. "And I'm not going home with you." Stacy's smile thinned out until it barely existed. "Excuse me?" "Three labs, Stacy." He kept his eyes on her, refusing to look away first. "Three separate tests, three separate results. That's not a coincidence and it's not a mistake. If Chloe isn't mine, then you cheated on me, and I don't see a single reason for this marriage to keep going." For a moment something flickered behind her eyes, gone before he could name it. Then her face hardened into something sharp and accusing. "You went and did this behind my back." She leaned forward, her voice climbing. "You had no right to run tests on my daughter without telling me. Who gave you permission to do that?" Lucien Legion almost laughed at how fast she'd flipped it around. "I needed permission to find out whether my own daughter is actually my daughter?" "That's not the point." Stacy's hand came down flat on the table again, rattling the silverware. "The point is you went sneaking around like I'm some criminal you needed to catch. Do you know how insulting that is?" "Insulting." Lucien Legion repeated the word slowly, like it tasted bad in his mouth. "You want to talk about insulting." Her jaw tightened, eyes narrowing into something cold and warning. Around them the restaurant noise hadn't stopped, and a couple at a nearby table had already glanced their way once. Stacy noticed it too, and her expression shifted fast, smoothing over into something more controlled, though the tension never left her shoulders. "Keep your voice down." She hissed it under her breath, glancing toward the door. "Do you want the whole city reading about this tomorrow? Think about what a scandal like this would do, to both of us." "To both of us." Lucien Legion's mouth twisted. "You mean to you." "Enough." Her voice dropped low and urgent. "We are not doing this here. Get up. Come home with me and we'll sort this out where nobody's listening." "No." The single word landed heavy between them. Stacy stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "No?" "That house isn't mine." Lucien Legion said it plainly, without any anger left in his tone, just tired fact. "It's yours. Your name's on the deed, your money built it, your face is on the walls in every magazine cover you framed. I've just been living there. It stopped feeling like home the second I read that report." Her face went white, then red, color rising fast up her neck. "You ungrateful son of a—" She caught herself, breathing hard through her nose, and when she spoke again her voice had turned to ice. "Fine. If you don't want to come home, then don't. Don't ever come back, Lucien Legion. I mean it." She stood so fast her chair nearly tipped, grabbed her bag, and walked out without looking back this time. Lucien Legion sat alone in the private room a long while, staring at nothing. Eventually he checked into a hotel two blocks from the restaurant, dropped onto the bed still in his clothes, and slept straight through until evening swallowed the windows whole. When he woke, his head felt clearer, though his chest still ached in that same dull way. He splashed water on his face, grabbed his jacket, and headed out with one thing on his mind. The bar from last night. He needed to pay back whoever had covered his hotel bill. Whoever it was, they hadn't needed to, and Lucien Legion didn't like owing anybody anything, especially not right now. He crossed the street toward the entrance just as a couple stepped out from the side alley near the door. Lucien Legion stopped cold. It was Marcus Webb. His colleague from the hospital, a guy he'd known since med school, currently married with two kids at home. A young woman was wrapped around his arm, laughing at something, her hand sliding up his chest like she owned him. Marcus's eyes swept right past Lucien Legion without a flicker of recognition, though there was no way he hadn't seen him standing there under the streetlight. Lucien Legion almost laughed out loud. Must be nice, being that shameless in public. He didn't call out. He didn't have the energy to deal with anyone else's mess tonight, and honestly, it wasn't his business what kind of animal Marcus wanted to be behind his wife's back. Still, standing there watching Marcus disappear around the corner with the woman clinging to him, something cold settled into Lucien Legion's gut. He thought back to the night before. Waking up naked. The message he never remembered sending. The blond hair the front desk clerk mentioned, nothing like Stacy's. If that woman had wanted to hurt him, really hurt him, she could have taken photos. She could have sold the story to any tabloid in the city and destroyed his name overnight, ruined his job, ruined everything, and he wouldn't have remembered a single second of it to defend himself. His stomach turned cold at how easily that could have happened. And the more he thought it over, the more sure he became of one simple fact. That woman was not Stacy. He didn't know who she was. He didn't know why she'd taken him, why she'd paid for the room, why she'd let him believe whatever he wanted to believe. But it hadn't been his wife driving that car, holding him up on that sidewalk, dragging him through that parking garage. Lucien Legion pushed the bar door open, the noise and light spilling out into the street, and stepped inside without noticing the woman standing quietly across the road. Short blond hair. A faint smile on her lips as she watched him disappear through the door.
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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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