Too Late, My Ex-Wife: Her Regret After Our Daughter's Death

Chapter 7: Her Home

Third Person's POV:

Lily hadn't moved from the hallway. Roman's son stood a few feet away, arms crossed, watching her with the particular satisfaction of a child who understood exactly what was happening even if the adults pretended otherwise.

Then Lily looked up.

"This is my home," she said quietly. Not angry. Just stating something she needed said out loud. "It's my birthday tomorrow. Why do I have to be the one who leaves?"

The hallway went very still.

Roman's son stared at her for exactly one second. Then his face collapsed.

"She's bullying me," he said, voice breaking on the last word with practiced precision. "She's bullying me because I don't have a mother. Everyone always does that. They say things like that because they know I don't have anyone to defend me."

He pressed his hands against his eyes.

Vivienne crossed to him immediately, crouched down, both hands on his shoulders. "Hey, hey, look at me," she said, in the voice she kept just for him. The soft one. The careful one.

Then she straightened and looked at Lily.

"Apologize," she said.

Nathan stepped forward. "She said nothing wrong."

"She made him feel unwelcome in his own—"

"This isn't his home, Vivienne. It's hers. She was stating a fact."

Vivienne's jaw tightened. "You've spoiled her so much she can't show basic consideration for someone else's feelings. Lily, apologize. Now."

Lily looked at her mother for a long moment. Something crossed her face that was too old for seven.

"Our daughter," Nathan said, keeping his voice flat, "has spent four days in a hospital bed. She came home to find another child's birthday decorations in her house and her name replaced on the banner. She didn't shout. She didn't cry. She straightened the corner of someone else's banner because she didn't want to damage it. Don't ask her to apologize for existing in her own home."

Vivienne looked at him with cold eyes, then back at Lily with an expression that said this conversation was only postponed.

"She'll have many more birthdays," Vivienne said. "Many more chances for us to celebrate together. But this boy hasn't had a real family around him in years. One day. That's all I'm asking."

"One day," Nathan repeated. "Right."

"And Roman and I have important matters to discuss tonight," she went on, her voice shifting into the register she used for things she'd already decided. "There's an investment project. Significant potential. We need to finalize the details, and having him here makes that easier. So I need you to stop creating obstacles and let me work."

Nathan unclenched his hands slowly.

"If you don't spend her birthday with her," he said quietly, "you will regret it. I'm telling you that plainly."

Vivienne's expression sharpened. "And there it is. Every single time. You can't go five minutes without using her condition to manipulate me. What else do you have besides her illness, Nathan. What else are you even capable of."

The hallway was quiet.

Lily had been listening to all of it. She looked between her parents, then did something that made Nathan's chest tighten in a way nothing else had.

She smiled.

Not a real one. A careful, constructed one. The kind of smile a child builds specifically so the adults around her won't feel bad.

"Daddy," she said, "I haven't been to the amusement park in forever." She tilted her head. "Can we go tomorrow? For my birthday?"

Nathan looked at her.

"Just the two of us," she added. "It'll be fun."

She wasn't looking at Vivienne when she said it. She'd already stopped asking Vivienne for things. Nathan didn't know exactly when that had happened, but it had, and it sat in him like something cold and permanent.

"Yeah," he said. "We can do that."

Lily nodded, satisfied, then looked at Vivienne carefully, measuring how much to ask for.

"Mommy," she said, "after you finish celebrating tomorrow, could you come to the amusement park for a little while? You don't have to stay long. I promise I won't take up much of your time."

The hallway was very quiet.

Vivienne looked at her daughter. Something shifted behind her eyes, brief and complicated.

"Yes," she said. "I'll come."

The smile on Lily's face turned real, just for a second. Small, unguarded, completely trusting in the way only children manage after everything has already gone wrong.

Nathan took her hand.

"We won't be in your way," he said to Vivienne, without looking at her. "Enjoy your evening. Just don't forget tomorrow."

He walked toward the door with Lily's hand in his. At the threshold he stopped once, without turning around.

"She has one wish," he said. "One. Don't make her regret having it."

He didn't wait for an answer. The door closed behind them.

~.~

Inside, Roman watched the door from across the room.

He waited until their footsteps faded down the path, then let out a slow breath and turned back to Vivienne, who was still standing in the hallway, looking at the closed door with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"Are you alright," he said.

She was quiet a moment. Then she turned, and the expression was gone. "I'm fine. What were you saying about the project."

Roman smiled.

He moved to the table and opened the folder he'd prepared three days earlier. Printed documents. Projected figures. A prospectus that had taken him two weeks to assemble, real data woven through the fabricated numbers carefully enough that a cursory check would find nothing wrong.

"The window is narrow," he said, spreading the pages out. "Demand's high, other investors are circling. The returns over eighteen months are projected at—" he tapped a figure "—that."

Vivienne leaned in and looked at the number.

He watched her face.

"That's significant," she said.

"It is. But the entry requirement is substantial. This isn't a partial investment. To secure the position and the return, you'd need to commit fully."

"How fully."

"Most of your available capital," he said simply. "I know that's not a small thing to ask. I wouldn't bring it to you if I didn't believe in it completely."

Vivienne looked back at the documents. The figures. The growth curve Roman had sketched himself in a rented office three weeks earlier.

"I want my team to run a verification check tomorrow," she said.

Roman's expression didn't move. "Of course. That's completely reasonable."

She nodded and kept reading.

His son appeared from the hallway and tugged his sleeve. "What else will we have tomorrow?"

"Go to bed," Roman said quietly.

The boy glanced at the documents on the table, then at his father's face, and went without arguing.

Roman watched Vivienne turn another page. Fingers crossed there'd be no issue. Tomorrow, he told himself. He just needed one more day.