Betrayed Broken Husband Becomes a Billionaire Daddy

4: Shallow Lies

Lucien 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.