[Caspian’s POV]
The second coffee with Victoria goes exactly as planned.
I text Serena at 2:47 PM: Meeting Victoria at Café Lumière. 3:00. Should be done by 4.
Her response arrives in under a minute: Noted. Try not to enjoy it.
The barb lands with the precision she's perfected over years of verbal combat. I pocket my phone and push through the café doors, already cataloging the photographer across the street pretending to read a newspaper.
Victoria is punctual, polished, camera-ready in blush silk that photographs beautifully. She air-kisses my cheeks with practiced warmth, her perfume cloying where Serena's is subtle. We order—espresso for me, the same complicated tea blend as Thursday—and she launches into her script.
I keep it brief. Professional. When she touches my arm, I don't lean in. When she laughs, I offer only the minimum response required for the cameras. Forty-three minutes of strategic performance, and then I'm standing, citing work obligations, leaving a generous tip for the waiter who witnessed our farce.
At 4:02 PM, I text Serena: Done. Heading home.
Her response: Aria's been asking when you'll be back. Apparently I'm not entertaining enough.
The warmth that spreads through my chest at those words is embarrassing in its intensity. I'm not used to being wanted. Not like this—not for bedtime stories and puzzle-solving and the mundane architecture of family life.
The penthouse smells like the tomato sauce Serena makes from scratch, the one she learned from her grandmother and guards like a state secret. Aria crashes into my legs before I've fully crossed the threshold, her arms wrapping around my knees with the ferocity of someone who's been waiting all afternoon.
"Mr. Serious Boss!" She tilts her head back to grin at me. "Mommy made pasta but she won't let me eat it yet because you weren't here."
"Then I'd better wash my hands quickly." I ruffle her dark hair, still marveling at the way she fits against me. "Can't keep the pasta waiting."
Dinner is domestic chaos—Aria chattering about her day while Serena pretends not to smile at my attempts to twirl spaghetti without splattering sauce on my shirt. I fail. She laughs. Aria announces that I need more practice.
"Mommy's better at pasta," she declares with the brutal honesty of childhood.
"Mommy's better at most things," I agree, catching Serena's eye across the table. "I'm still learning."
The look she gives me is soft around the edges, something she'd never have allowed two months ago. Progress. Fragile, hard-won progress that feels more valuable than any merger I've ever closed.
After dinner, Aria demands her bedtime story from me—a ritual we've developed over weeks of trial and error. She picks a picture book about a dragon who's afraid of butterflies, which she finds hilarious for reasons I don't entirely understand. I do the voices. She corrects my dragon impression three times.
Serena watches from the doorway, arms crossed, wearing an expression I can't quite decode.
When Aria's eyes finally flutter closed, I ease off the bed with the careful movements of a man defusing a bomb. One wrong step and she'll be wide awake, demanding another chapter.
The hallway is quiet. Serena's already in the living room, curled on the couch with a glass of wine and the exhausted slump of someone who's been running on fumes. I settle beside her, close enough to feel her warmth without crowding.
"You're good with her," she says quietly. "Better than I expected."
"That sounds like a compliment hidden inside an insult."
"It's both." Her mouth curves. "I'm multitalented."
The city glitters through the windows, indifferent to the small miracle happening in this room. I have a family. A real family, messy and complicated and nothing like the cold precision of Rothwell expectations.
A small voice interrupts my thoughts.
"Mommy?"
Aria stands in the hallway, Mr. Whiskers dangling from one hand, her expression troubled.
Serena straightens immediately. "What's wrong, baby? Bad dream?"
"Why does Mommy look tired?" Aria's brow furrows as she studies Serena's face. Then her gaze shifts to me, and what comes out of her mouth stops my heart.
"Daddy, is Mommy okay?"
The word lands like a gift I haven't earned. Daddy. Not Mr. Serious Boss. Not Caspian. Daddy.
Serena's breath catches audibly. Her hand finds mine on the couch cushion, squeezing tight enough to leave marks.
"Mommy's fine, sweetheart." My voice comes out rougher than intended. "Just tired from cooking such delicious pasta."
"You should make her tea." Aria nods sagely. "Tea makes everything better."
"That's very smart advice." I'm blinking too much. Something hot prickles behind my eyes. "I'll make her tea right now."
Serena rises, still holding my hand for one suspended moment before letting go. "Let me tuck you back in, baby. Daddy will be here when you wake up."
Daddy. She says it like it's always been true.
They disappear down the hallway, and I stand in the living room feeling like a man who's been handed something precious he doesn't deserve.
I'm halfway to the kitchen when the sound stops me—a soft whisper against hardwood. Something sliding under the front door.
A manila envelope lies on the floor, unmarked except for my name in typed letters.
My pulse kicks up before my brain registers why. The envelope is wrong. Hand-delivered to a building with security that requires clearance. Someone with access. Someone with intent.
I tear it open.
Photographs spill into my hands—grainy, dated, clearly taken without consent. Graduation night. A party I don't remember, faces blurred by time and cheap champagne.
Serena is in every frame.
Not alone.
She's talking to a man I don't recognize, his hand on her lower back. Laughing at something another stranger said, her head thrown back. Touching someone's arm with the easy intimacy of familiarity.
A typed note accompanies the images: How well do you really know her? The dorm room wasn't her first choice that night. Just her last.
My father's voice echoes in my skull—the breakfast meeting, his careful poison. How well do you really know her? The words exactly the same. His fingerprints all over this delivery.
The paternity test was definitive. Ninety-nine point nine percent. Aria is mine—has always been mine—and I know this with the certainty of lab results and grey eyes and the way she tilts her head exactly like I do when she's thinking.
I know this.
But the photographs show Serena touching another man's arm. Laughing with strangers. The timeline is right—graduation night, before she found me on that balcony.
For one shameful moment, doubt creeps through the cracks my father's voice has opened.
What if there was someone else? What if the dorm room was a fallback, not a choice? What if she—
I stop the thought before it fully forms. This is what he wants. This is the game—plant seeds, watch them grow, harvest the destruction.
"Cas?" Serena's voice floats down the hallway. "The tea?"
My hands move before I've decided. I slide the envelope into my desk drawer, bury it beneath contracts and paperwork and the detritus of a life I'm trying to leave behind.
"Coming," I call back, and my voice sounds normal. Steady. The voice of a man who hasn't just hidden evidence from the woman he loves.
I'm protecting her, I tell myself. She doesn't need to see these. Doesn't need to know what games my father is playing.
But as I fill the kettle with water that won't boil fast enough, I know the truth.
I'm not protecting her.
I'm protecting the doubt I'm too ashamed to admit.