Chapter 2 - The Face in the MoonlightThe face of the sleeping infant hit me like a physical blow.
It wasn't a stranger's face. It was a terrifying, miniature mirror. Beneath the thatch of fine dark hair and the button nose, the infant possessed the exact same distinct, slightly crooked left eyebrow and subtle dimple carved into the chin that belonged to my husband—and to a faded polaroid of Eric’s estranged, long-dead father that sat locked away in the bottom of our attic safe.
My legs gave out completely. I grabbed onto the bedpost to keep from collapsing onto the floor.
How?
If this was Eric’s child, born of another woman, why was the baby here, in our bed, wrapped in a blanket we hadn't bought, cared for with bottles we didn't own? And where was the mother?
Before I could process the suffocating swirl of questions, the infant stirred again, letting out a soft, whimpering cry.
Instantly, Eric snapped awake.
The billionaire software mogul—the man who commanded boardrooms and negotiated multi-million-dollar tech acquisitions with ice-water veins—moved with a desperate, frantic speed I had never witnessed before. His hands scooped the baby up against his bare chest before the child could cry out a second time.
“Shh, hey... hey now, little man, daddy’s right here. I got you, Leo,” Eric whispered, his voice rough with exhaustion and a fierce, terrifying tenderness.
He rocked the baby gently against his heart, pacing softly toward the window.
The name echoed off the bedroom walls like a gunshot. Leo.
My throat closed up. Tears hot and blinding spilled over my eyelashes. “Leo?” I choked out, the word tearing its way out of my raw throat.
Eric froze.
The rigid tension that locked his spine told me everything I needed to know. Slowly, with agonizing reluctance, he turned around.
In the pale moonlight, my husband looked older—hollowed out, his eyes bloodshot, his jaw shadowed with a thick beard. But it was the look of absolute, trapped terror in his gaze that shattered whatever illusion of our marriage remained.
“Claire,” he breathed, his voice cracking. “You... you weren't supposed to be back until Thursday.”
“Clearly,” I whispered, stepping out of the shadows, my voice shaking with a rage so cold it burned. “If I had come home on schedule, how long would you have kept this a secret, Eric? How long were you planning to play house with another woman’s baby in our bed?”
Eric flinched as if I had struck him across the face with a lead pipe. He instinctively pulled the baby tighter against his chest, shielding the infant with his own body.
“It’s not what you think,” he stammered, stepping back until his legs hit the edge of the mattress. “Claire, please... put down your bag, sit down, let me explain from the beginning—”
“Explain what?” I screamed, the dam finally breaking. The grief of losing our unborn child, the loneliness of the past year, the agony of watching the man I loved harbor a secret life—all of it exploded outward. “Explain whose child this is? Explain why a baby with your face is sleeping on my pillow while I was breaking my back in New York? Who is the mother, Eric? Did she die? Is she waiting in the guest house? Who is she?!”
“There is no other woman!” Eric yelled back, his voice cracking with a raw, desperate anguish that stopped me dead in my tracks.
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He sank down onto the edge of the bed, burying his face in the baby’s dark hair, his broad shoulders shaking.
“There never was another woman, Claire,” he whispered into the silent room. “Never. But this... this is the only piece of my sister left in this world.”
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