Vincent Moretti promised his pregnant wife he would come back for her after their private jet made a terrifying emergency landing.

The rain had turned into a steady, gray morning drizzle when Vincent arrived outside the Peninsula Hotel.

He didn't bring security. He didn't bring Marcus. He wore a simple black cashmere coat and walked through the lobby with the single-minded focus of a man walking toward his own execution.

He knew Anna was having breakfast in the private conservatory on the fourth floor; his contacts had confirmed Julian Sterling was currently in a breakfast meeting with the Chicago Port Authority on the other side of town.

Anna was alone.

Vincent stepped into the glass-walled conservatory. The room smelled of fresh lilies, roasting coffee, and buttery croissants.

Anna was seated at a corner table overlooking the misty terrace. Little Leo was sitting across from her in a high chair, happily mashing strawberries with a silver fork, his face decorated with red juice.

Anna saw Vincent the moment he stepped off the elevator. Her back stiffened, but she didn't call for security. She simply wiped Leo’s mouth with a cloth napkin, murmured something in the boy’s ear, and motioned for her nanny, who was sitting two tables away, to escort Leo toward the private play lounge down the hall.

Leo passed Vincent, his bright brown eyes locking onto Vincent’s face. The boy smiled shyly, holding up a half-eaten strawberry.

Vincent’s chest seized. A physical pain clawed at his heart. He wanted to drop to his knees, scoop the boy into his arms, and hold him until the sun died. But he forced himself to stand still until the nanny led Leo through the glass doors.

Anna didn't look up from her tea. "You have thirty seconds to leave before I file a restraining order, Mr. Moretti."

Vincent walked to her table and pulled out the chair across from her. He sat down.

"His name is Leo," Vincent said, his voice cracked and raw. "Leo Julian Bennett."

Anna took a measured sip of Earl Grey. "His name is none of your business."

"He has my chin, Anna. He has my mother’s eyes. He is my son."

Anna set her teacup down with a sharp *clink* against the saucer. She leaned forward, the icy mask slipping away to reveal the incandescent fury beneath.

"He is not your son," she hissed, every word laced with venom. "A father is a man who protects his child. A father doesn't leave his eight-month pregnant wife trapped in a smoking metal coffin while he escorts his high-school sweetheart down the emergency slide!"

"I thought I had time!" Vincent’s voice broke, the agony of three years tearing through his composure. "You think I wanted to leave you?! I thought the front exit was clear! I thought I could drop Sophia on the tarmac and run back inside to carry you out! I didn't know the fuel tank would detonate!"

"You made a choice, Vincent!" Anna slapped her hand against the marble tabletop. Several patrons at nearby tables turned to look, but she didn't care. "In that split second between life and death, your instinct didn't reach for your wife. It didn't reach for your unborn child. It reached for Sophia Carter!"

"I was a fool!" Vincent yelled, tears finally spilling from his dark eyes, tracing down his stubbled cheeks. "I was an arrogant, blind, miserable fool! I thought I could control the situation! I thought I could save everyone!"

"Well, you failed," Anna said, her voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. "You saved the snake who put us there."

Vincent froze. His breath caught. "What do you know?"

Anna leaned back, a bitter smile touching her lips. "Did you really think Julian didn't investigate the crash? Sophia Carter owed four million dollars to a cartel syndicate in Miami through her failed fashion boutique. A syndicate that threatened to break her legs if she didn't pay. And the only way she could get the money was if you married her and unlocked the Carter-Moretti trust fund."

Vincent felt a cold void open beneath him.

"She couldn't marry you while I was alive," Anna continued, her voice trembling with hatred. "She bribed a ground mechanic in Chicago five hundred thousand dollars to contaminate the auxiliary turbine line. She was supposed to delay our flight, make us take her car, make you stay. But when you insisted on flying anyway, she panicked and boarded the plane with us—convinced she could survive whatever landing the pilots managed."

Anna leaned in closer, her eyes burning into Vincent’s shattered soul.

"She tried to murder me and your son, Vincent. And when the plane crashed, you handed her salvation on a silver platter while you condemned us to burn."

Vincent sat paralyzed. The world seemed to dissolve around him into absolute gray ash.

Every kiss he had tolerated from Sophia over the last three years. Every time he had comforted her nightmares about the crash. Every check he had written to clear her boutique debts out of lingering guilt for surviving while Anna died.

It had all been orchestrations of a monster.

And he had been her greatest accomplice.

"Anna..." Vincent reached across the table, his fingers trembling, desperate to touch her skin. "Anna, I swear to God on my life, I didn't know. If I had known—"

"It doesn't matter what you knew, Vincent," Anna said coldly, pulling her hands back into her lap. "What matters is what you did. You let go of my hand."

She stood up, smoothing the wrinkles from her ivory trousers.

"Leo will never know you exist," she said, looking down at him with an expression of profound pity. "He has a mother who fought through third-degree burns and emergency surgery to keep his heart beating. He doesn't need a father who traded him away."

She turned and walked toward the lounge where Leo was waiting.