Betrayed Broken Husband Becomes a Billionaire Daddy

5: Marriage and Deals

Inside the bar, the lights were dimmer than the night before, and the same bartender who'd been wiping glasses last night was doing the exact same thing now.

"I need to talk to the owner." Lucien Legion kept his voice level. "Short blond hair. She was here last night."

The bartender's eyes flicked up, then back down to the glass in his hand. "Owner's not in tonight."

"Then when is she in."

"Couldn't say."

Lucien Legion pressed his palms flat on the bar counter, leaning in. "Look, she paid for a hotel room under my name last night. I want to pay her back and I want to know exactly what happened. That's it. I'm not here to cause trouble."

The bartender shrugged, wiping the same spot on the glass he'd already wiped twice. "I just work the bar, man. I don't know anything about hotel rooms."

"Can I see the footage from last night. The cameras." Lucien Legion gestured toward the small black dome mounted near the ceiling in the corner.

"System's down. Been down for repairs since yesterday morning." The bartender said it flat, without even glancing up this time.

Lucien Legion's jaw tightened. That's convenient.

He stood there a moment longer, searching the man's face for any crack, any hesitation that might mean he was lying. There was nothing to grab onto. Just a bored guy wiping glasses who clearly wanted this conversation over.

Lucien Legion finally turned and walked back out into the night, his mind spinning in the same useless circles it had been spinning in for two days straight. No footage. No owner. No answers. Just a blond haired ghost who'd apparently paid cash, vanished, and left him holding nothing but questions.

He checked into the same hotel from before and didn't bother leaving the room for the rest of that day, or most of the next.

Lying on top of the sheets with the curtains shut, Lucien Legion stared at the ceiling and let all sixteen years crash over him at once.

He thought about the fellowship offer he'd turned down eleven years ago, the one that would have sent him to train under one of the best surgeons on the coast, because Stacy had just landed her first big role and needed him close, needed someone steady at home while her career took off.

He thought about the research position he'd walked away from two years after that, back when Chloe started struggling in school and someone needed to be there every single afternoon, and it obviously wasn't going to be Stacy with her filming schedule.

Every time, without complaint, Lucien Legion had folded his own future down small enough to fit around theirs.

And for what.

For a daughter who wasn't his blood. For a wife who'd apparently been keeping secrets bigger than anything he'd ever imagined.

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until colors burst behind them, but no amount of pressure made the ache in his chest let up.

Three days passed like that, mostly silence, mostly staring at nothing.

On the fourth day, a knock came at the door.

Lucien Legion opened it to find Stacy standing there, dressed down for once, no cameras trailing her, just her and a look on her face he hadn't seen in years. Something almost soft.

"Can I come in."

He stepped aside without a word.

She walked past him into the room, glancing around at the rumpled sheets and the takeout containers stacked on the desk. "You've been living like this?"

"Better than living with lies." Lucien Legion's voice came out rougher than he meant it to.

Stacy turned to face him, arms crossing loosely over her chest. "Lucien Legion, come home. Whatever you think you know, we can figure it out together. Chloe's asking about you. She doesn't understand why you disappeared."

For a second, guilt twisted low in his gut at the mention of Chloe's name. Whatever the DNA said, she was still the little girl he'd taught to ride a bike, still the same kid who used to fall asleep on his chest during long car rides.

But that guilt didn't erase anything else.

Lucien Legion walked to the desk, pulled a folder from underneath his jacket, and held it out to her. "I'm not coming home."

Stacy's eyes dropped to the folder, then back up to his face. "What is that."

"Divorce papers." He said it plainly, no drama in his voice at all, just flat exhaustion. "You cheated on me. Chloe isn't mine. There's nothing left here for me to come home to."

Her face went rigid. "You're seriously doing this."

"I already did it once, in that restaurant." Lucien Legion's eyes stayed steady on hers. "You just didn't want to hear it."

"I never cheated on you." Stacy's voice rose sharp and fast, her hands curling into fists at her sides. "I don't know where that test came from or who ran it, but it's wrong. It has to be wrong."

"Three labs, Stacy." Lucien Legion's tone didn't waver. "Three different results. All the same."

"I don't care if it's thirty labs." Her voice cracked with something that might have been real anger or might have been fear, Lucien Legion couldn't tell anymore which was which with her. "I have never once cheated on you. Not once, not with anyone."

They stood there, the space between them thick with sixteen years of everything unsaid, both of them refusing to bend an inch.

Finally Stacy snatched the folder from his hand, gripping it so hard her knuckles whitened. "Fine. You want to do this the hard way, we'll do it the hard way."

She turned and walked out, the door clicking shut behind her instead of slamming this time, which somehow felt worse.

That afternoon, Lucien Legion drove to the courthouse and filed the paperwork himself, signing his name on every line where it was required, his hand steady even though nothing inside him felt steady at all.

He sat in the waiting area of the family court office, expecting Stacy to walk through those doors at any minute, ready for one more round of arguing in front of strangers.

She never showed.

Instead, the door opened and a man walked in, dressed in an expensive suit, carrying a leather folder under one arm, moving with the kind of calm confidence that only came from being sent somewhere on someone else's behalf.