The CEO’s Secret Heir

Chapter 10 — Five Years Later

Five years later, Noah Andrade stood in the aisle of a bus entering the capital and announced, with absolute seriousness, that skyscrapers looked like giant teeth.

— Not all of them — Lívia said, pulling him gently back into his seat before the bus turned. — Sit down, please.

Noah obeyed with the dignity of someone doing a favor for adults. He pressed his face to the window, one hand gripping the worn straps of his backpack, the other holding a stuffed bear by one arm. The bear's name was Professor Bear because Noah believed every respectable creature needed a profession.

— That one looks like a tooth — he insisted.

Lívia followed his pointing finger.

The Vasconcelos Group tower cut into the morning sky ahead, blue glass flashing under sunlight, silver letters near the top like a signature written above the city.

Her chest tightened before she could stop it.

— That one is a building.

— A tooth building.

— If you say so.

— Does someone live there?

— People work there.

— Do they brush it?

Despite the knot in her stomach, Lívia laughed.

— I hope so.

Noah turned to her, pleased with his own logic. He had Dante's seriousness in miniature, which made his nonsense sound like legal argument. His hair fell in dark waves over his forehead no matter how often she cut it. His eyes, now settled into the same dark intensity that had haunted and protected her memories, studied everything as if the world were a puzzle adults had failed to solve properly.

He was five.

He asked too many questions, remembered everything, disliked carrots, loved numbers, and slept with one foot outside the blanket. He could build towers from mismatched blocks and then explain why they would collapse. He could recognize when Lívia was sad even when she smiled.

He was the reason she had returned.

Not Dante. Never Dante.

Work.

Stability.

A school with better support.

A library card in his own name.

A weekend without counting coins before buying ice cream together.

Health insurance if the contract became permanent one day, somehow, miraculously.

A chance to buy him a proper desk instead of letting him do homework at the kitchen table while Helena chopped vegetables around his elbows. A chance to say yes sometimes, not only later, not only when the cheapest option was also the kindest disappointment she could offer.

A chance to give Noah more than survival in a city where opportunities did not arrive already tired.

That was what she told herself as the bus passed beneath the shadow of the Vasconcelos tower.

There were other reasons too, buried under the practical ones. São Miguel had saved her, but it had also begun to shrink around Noah's questions. He needed libraries larger than two shelves in the municipal center. He needed teachers who did not treat his seriousness as arrogance. He needed a place where Lívia could grow her own career instead of patching together invoices, flower arrangements, and gratitude from people who paid late but meant well. Love had carried them for five years. Love, unfortunately, did not pay for speech therapy evaluations, better textbooks, or the science kits Noah stared at through shop windows without asking for them because he already understood money too well.

Noah tapped the window.

— Mama, you made the serious face.

Lívia smoothed his hair. — I am thinking.

— About the tooth building?

— About our new apartment.

He brightened. — Does it have a window?

— Two.

— Rich.

The woman in the seat across the aisle smiled into her phone.

Lívia leaned close and whispered, — Very rich. We may have to host diplomats.

Noah nodded solemnly. — Professor Bear will wear a tie.

The capital welcomed them with noise.

Buses sighed at curbs. Taxis argued with motorcycles. Coffee shops steamed. Office workers walked quickly with paper cups and faces already late. It was the same city, and not the same at all. Five years had polished some corners and dirtied others. New screens hung on buildings. Old stores had vanished. The hotel where everything had begun stood several blocks away, though Lívia did not look toward it.

She had promised herself she would not be a woman ruled by corners.

Still, when she stepped off the bus with Noah's hand in hers, she felt the past move under the pavement like something sleeping lightly.

Helena met them at the station exit.

Her knee had improved after surgery two years earlier, though she still used a cane on bad days. That morning, pride made her stand straighter than comfort allowed. She opened her arms, and Noah ran into them with a cry.

— Grandma!

— My prince of questions.

— I saw a tooth building.

— Excellent. The city is showing off its dental problems already.

Noah began explaining architectural dentistry while Helena looked over his head at Lívia.

— You are pale.

— You said that five years ago.

— I was right then too.

Lívia hugged her carefully.

For two months, Helena had been in the capital helping arrange the apartment, medical follow-ups, and school applications while Lívia finished work obligations in São Miguel. They had decided returning separately would make the transition easier. It had, in practical terms. Emotionally, nothing about stepping back into the city of Dante Vasconcelos could be easy.

— The apartment is ready — Helena said.

— Define ready.

— There are mattresses, curtains, and one suspicious faucet.

— Luxury.

— Noah will think so.

Noah looked up. — Do I have a room?

Lívia crouched to his height. — A very small one.

— With a window?

— One window.

— Then Professor Bear approves.

The apartment was on the fourth floor of an old building above a pharmacy and a bakery. The stairs smelled of bleach and bread. Their unit had two bedrooms, one narrow kitchen, a living room with cracked paint, and a balcony barely deep enough for two chairs. To Noah, it was a castle because the bedroom window faced a jacaranda tree and a strip of sky.

He ran from room to room with Professor Bear tucked under one arm.

— This is where I will build the train city. This is where Grandma will sit. This is where Mama will make the serious work face.

— I do not have a serious work face — Lívia said.

Helena snorted.

— You do.

— It is hereditary — Noah added.

Lívia froze for half a second.

Hereditary.

The word was innocent. Most dangerous words were.

Helena saw the change in her face and moved smoothly.

— Then you inherited it from your mother's side, because we are a very serious people.

Noah looked at her cane, her flowered blouse, and the bakery bag in her hand.

— Grandma, you are not serious.

— I am deeply serious about pastries.

They visited Noah's new school that afternoon. It was only six blocks away, with blue gates, a courtyard shaded by two old trees, and walls covered in drawings made by children who had not yet learned that paper could be too small for dreams. Noah inspected the classroom, the bookshelf, the tiny chairs, and the aquarium with one sleepy fish.

— He looks disappointed — Noah said, pointing at the fish.

— Perhaps he wanted a window too — Lívia answered.

The teacher laughed and knelt to introduce herself. Noah hid half behind Lívia's leg for exactly four seconds, then asked whether the school allowed maps, magnets, and bears with academic titles. By the time they left, he had accepted the classroom, distrusted the fish, and decided one boy named Tomás looked like he might become either a friend or a problem.

On the walk back, Noah slipped his hand into Lívia's.

— Are we staying in this city?

The question was casual, but his fingers held too tightly.

Lívia stopped beneath the jacaranda tree outside their building.

— We are trying to.

— Trying means maybe.

— Sometimes. But I am going to work very hard.

— You always work very hard.

— Then I have practice.

Noah leaned against her side. — I like the window.

It was such a small reason to be brave that it nearly broke her.

The day moved through unpacking, cleaning, and Noah discovering every echo in the empty rooms. Lívia kept busy because stillness invited memory. She folded clothes into drawers, taped a drawing to Noah's wall, arranged kitchen cups, and avoided the envelope of documents in her bag until evening.

After Noah fell asleep surrounded by boxes and one very responsible bear, Lívia stood in his doorway for a long time. In sleep, his face lost the severe concentration that made strangers smile and her heart ache. He looked younger than five. Smaller than the secret she had built around him. One hand rested near his cheek, fingers curled loosely around the bear's ear. The other lay open on the blanket, trusting the world because she had spent every day making sure he could.

— I brought him back to the one place I promised to keep him from — she murmured.

Helena, behind her, touched her shoulder.

— You brought him where there is a future.

Those two truths stood beside each other and refused to make peace.

Later, Lívia sat at the kitchen table with Helena.

The city glowed beyond the small window.

— Are you sure about this job? — Helena asked.

Lívia opened the folder.

Aster Creative Interiors and Events.

Junior Project Coordinator.

Temporary contract with possibility of renewal.

Better pay than São Miguel. Better references. Better access to the kind of portfolio that could change everything if she survived the first six months.

— I need it.

— That is not what I asked.

Lívia looked at the paperwork.

— I am not going back to that hotel. I am not working for Premier Staffing. It is a different company.

— In the same city.

— It is a big city.

Helena's expression said cities were never big enough when the past had money.

— What if you see him?

Lívia's fingers paused on the contract.

For five years, Dante had been a name locked behind her teeth. She had seen him only in magazines, on screens, in photographs she turned away from too quickly. He had remained distant because she had built distance with both hands.

Now the distance had buildings, traffic, and only luck between them.

— I will not — she said.

— You do not know that.

— If I spend my life avoiding the possibility of him, he still controls it.

Helena sat back.

The answer seemed to please and frighten her at once.

— That sounds brave.

— It is mostly exhaustion.

— Many brave things are.

Lívia smiled faintly.

Then the phone on the table buzzed.

An email from Aster.

Welcome again, Lívia. We are excited to have you join us on Monday. Please review the attached project calendar before your first coordination meeting.

She opened the attachment.

The first pages were ordinary. Vendor lists, office address, onboarding schedule, password instructions. Then she reached the upcoming projects section.

Her gaze stopped.

Vasconcelos Group — Legacy Hall Renovation and Corporate Anniversary Exhibition.

Lead client presentation: pending.

Lívia did not breathe.

Helena leaned forward.

— What is it?

The words on the screen seemed too clean for what they meant.

Vasconcelos Group.

Not just the city.

Not just chance.

The tower with silver letters had entered her email, her work, her rent, her son's school fees.

She closed the file.

— Nothing.

Helena's eyes narrowed. — Lívia.

Noah murmured in his sleep from the next room. A small sound, a reminder, a weight that steadied her.

She opened the file again.

The past had money. Power. Glass towers.

But she had Noah.

And the woman who had left the capital five years ago in shame was not the woman sitting at that kitchen table now.

— My first project might be complicated — she said.

— How complicated?

Lívia looked at the company name one more time.

Her hands were cold.

Her voice was not.

— Vasconcelos complicated.

Helena closed her eyes.

— We can still leave — her mother said.

The offer was immediate, loyal, and impossible.

Lívia looked toward Noah's room. A cardboard box served as a temporary nightstand beside his mattress. On top of it sat the drawing he had made on the bus: a tower with exaggerated square teeth and three stick figures standing very far away from it. One figure had long hair. One had a cane. One held a bear. There was no father in the picture. There never had been.

— No — Lívia said. — I am tired of running before anyone is even chasing.

— Sometimes running early is wisdom.

— Sometimes it is letting them own the road.

Helena said nothing, but her eyes were wet.

Outside, the city kept shining as if it had not just opened a door Lívia had spent five years holding shut.