I signed.
The next morning, sunlight broke through after the rain.
Luca slept more peacefully, his fever down, his color better. The nurse called him “a little fighter,” and Giovanni looked proud enough to embarrass all of us.
Around ten, Caroline, my divorce attorney, arrived.
She was small, sharp-eyed, and furious on my behalf before she even reached the room.
“I leave you alone for one night,” she said, “and you summon an international incident.”
“I called my ex-husband.”
“Same thing, in this case.”
Giovanni stood when she entered. “Ms. Price.”
“Mr. Moretti.”
Their handshake was brief and cold.
Caroline turned to me. “How is Luca?”
“Improving.”
Her face softened. “Thank God.”
Then she saw Giovanni sitting beside the bassinet and sighed. “Well. This will be complicated.”
“It already is.”
She lowered her voice. “There’s something you need to know.”
My stomach tightened. “What?”
She glanced toward Giovanni.
“You can say it in front of him,” I said.
Caroline didn’t look happy about that, but she continued.
“When you asked for Giovanni’s number, I pulled your divorce file from archive. There was a sealed addendum I had never seen.”
Giovanni’s eyes sharpened. “Sealed by whom?”
“That’s the problem,” Caroline said. “The filing stamp appears legitimate, but it was never logged through my office. It was attached to the final decree fifteen months ago.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
She removed a copy from her bag.
My hands felt cold before I even touched it.
The document was a notarized declaration.
Signed with Giovanni’s name.
Dated two weeks before our divorce finalized.
I scanned the lines once.
Then again.
No.
I looked up at him.
His face had gone blank, but his eyes were burning.
“I did not sign that.”
Caroline’s voice was tight. “I hoped you would say that.”
“What is it?” Giovanni asked.
I forced myself to read aloud.
“In the event Lauren Grant Moretti is found to be pregnant at the time of dissolution or within three hundred days thereafter, Giovanni Alessandro Moretti waives all parental claim, custody interest, inheritance attachment, and notice rights regarding any child born of the marriage.”
The room seemed to vanish around me.
For seven months, I had believed I was hiding Luca from Giovanni.
For fifteen months, I had carried guilt like a stone beneath my ribs.
But someone had filed a document making it look like Giovanni had abandoned a child before he even knew that child existed.
Giovanni’s voice was dangerously soft.