The Billionaire’s Runaway Babymama

Chapter 3

Lucien POV

"Have you found the girl?"

I didn’t lift my gaze from the rain-slicked window of my penthouse suite as Marcus, my personal assistant, walked into the room.

For five years, those words had been my morning ritual.

Marcus dropped a thick manila folder onto the mahogany desk. The heavy thud echoed in the silence of the room. He shook his head and there was a look of defeat on his face which already gave him out.

"Still no trace of her location, sir," Marcus reported softly. "But we found something else. It has been officially confirmed that your wife was not the one who saved you in Milan twenty years ago. Travel records show she wasn't even in Italy when the shooting happened. However, we have successfully traced the history of the bracelet left with you."

My chest tightened. I turned slowly, my eyes locked on the small, intricate piece of silver resting on the velvet tray on my desk. It was shaped like a simple heart, but the wirework was incredibly complex.

"Go on," I commanded.

“It’s highly identical to an old Laurent design," Marcus explained. "It was a limited edition created over two decades ago. The design should have faded from the market completely since the founder of Laurent Group died. I managed to track down one of the old housemaids who used to work for the family. She confirmed that the late Mrs. Laurent personally hand-crafted that specific bracelet for her only daughter. Abigail."

Abigail.

The name felt like a physical weight in my chest.

"The maid also mentioned..." Marcus hesitated, checking his notes. "She said the young lady ran out of the home five years ago because she was being physically abused by her father and stepmother. The family completely erased her from the company records afterward to avoid a public scandal."

I closed my eyes as a wave of cold, sharp fury washed over me. I had looked for her every single day since she vanished like searching itself might undo what had already been taken from me.

Five years ago, I had chosen her because she had become impossible to ignore.

She wasn’t loud and she wasn’t trying to be seen. But somehow, my eyes always found her first in every room and every moment I wasn’t supposed to be looking.

I called it an arrangement to justify it, but I had already been watching her longer than I ever admitted to myself. And now, knowing that all that time she had been in my bed while living through something far darker than I ever imagined… something in me twisted violently.

I wanted to strangle every single person who had ever laid a hand on her. And the worst part was not the anger. It was the fact that I hadn’t known sooner.

I picked up the red heart silver bracelet, my thumb tracing the worn metal. Twenty years ago, I had been kidnapped and shot in a dark alley in Milan, bleeding out and waiting for death.

However, a young girl had stumbled upon me.

She didn’t run although she should have because any sane child would have turned away from the blood, the darkness, and the way I was barely clinging to consciousness in that alley.

But she stayed.

Her small hands trembled as she reached for mine, like she was afraid I might disappear if she let go. She pressed her palm against me with a kind of stubborn courage that didn’t belong to her age, and then she ran, calling for help.

She came back again and again before the paramedics arrived, bringing water, speaking to me like I was still something worth saving.

And when they finally lifted me onto the stretcher, she leaned in close enough that I could see the fear in her eyes and the decision she had already made not to give up on me.

She pressed a bracelet into my hand.

Her fingers lingered for just a second, as if she was sealing a promise she didn’t fully understand.

“Big boy,” she whispered, her voice shaking, “please be strong… and don’t die. Take this. I hope you return it when we meet again.”

I remember trying to respond, but my voice never made it out.

All I could do was hold onto her words as the world blurred.

And just before I was taken away, I saw it…

There was a faint glint of a sapphire pendant around her neck.

I never forgot that light and when my father threatened to strip my inheritance rights five years ago unless I married immediately, I had been desperate to find my saviour. Out of nowhere, Clara had appeared wearing that exact sapphire pendant.

Driven by a twisted sense of gratitude, I married her especially after she claimed she was the one who saved me that night.

At the time, I didn’t question it the way I should have. I convinced myself that recognition was enough. That after years of searching for a faceless memory, it didn’t matter how she had reappeared, only that she had.

But the marriage was never anything real.

Months later, when I finally asked her about the sapphire pendant, she didn’t even hesitate. She simply laughed, like I had asked something trivial, and told me she had bought it randomly from a boutique because she liked how it looked.

She didn’t remember the night, the rain, the blood or me.

That was the moment something inside me went still.

And now, with everything I had uncovered, the girl who saved me was not Clara.

And there was a far higher chance she had been Abigail all along.

And I had thrown her away for a five-million-dollar buyout. More than I ever wanted to acknowledge, I had been utterly miserable for the five years she’d been gone.

It wasn’t just about a broken contract. It felt as though she had ripped away a piece of my soul when she left, leaving a hollow space that nothing else could fill.

My phone buzzed on the desk. I glanced down to see a text from Clara.

“Lucien, you haven’t come to visit me for the past five months. This is unfair. But I prepared a meal for you today. Would you eat? Your son has been asking for his father too.”

I snorted in disgust and flipped the phone face down. For the five years we had been married, we had only slept together once, and it was after she drugged my drink at a gala.

A few months later, she declared she was pregnant. The moment the boy was born, I ordered a secret paternity test and discovered the child wasn't mine. I wanted to drag her name through the mud, but my father had barred me, claiming a public divorce would tarnish the Arden Group’s global image during our critical merger.

"Do you have any other news for me?" I asked Marcus, my voice tight.

"Yes, sir. Your long-time friend Elias Romano is back from Paris. He’s throwing a private welcome-home party in a week time, and he specifically requested your presence."

"Fix it in my schedule," I said, buttoning my suit jacket. Elias was a good man, but we had lost touch after his father passed away and he took over his family’s overseas business.

Stepping away from the office to see an old friend sounded like the only tolerable option I had. "Have you heard back from the Laurent lawyers regarding the separation?"

Marcus sighed. "They refuse to sign the divorce papers. They’re demanding a compensation package four times higher than what was agreed upon in the prenuptial contract."

Clara was the biggest mistake of my life. I had been a blind fool, mistaking a manipulative monster for the pure, brave girl who had saved me in the dark.

I checked my cuffs and walked out of the suite, Marcus following a step behind. We descended to the secure VIP lobby of the building. Just as the elevator doors slid open and I stepped out, a tiny force crashed directly into my legs.

"Oof!"

I stumbled back a half-step, my brow furrowing in irritation. I looked down, expecting a reckless adult, but found myself staring at a tiny girl. She couldn't have been more than five years old.

She was dressed in a ridiculously poofy dress paired with fluffy room slippers, and her hair was tied in two messy, chaotic pigtails.


There was no nanny or parents in sight. She was entirely alone. The little girl stumbled back, rubbing her nose. She tilted her head back to look up at me, and the moment she did, the breath was completely knocked out of my lungs.


Her eyes were green and the exact shade of my own. But it wasn't just the colour, it was her stubborn set of her jaw, the slight pout of her mouth, and the sheer audacity in her gaze. She looked like a miniature, adorable storm.

"I am sorry, Mister," she said, she didn’t look a bit scared.

She crossed her tiny arms over her chest. "I was looking for the way to the hopscotch court outside. Please, could you take me there? The adults in this place are way too boring."

I froze, my hands tightening into fists inside my pockets.

“Where is your mother, little girl?” I asked gently. “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

She tilted her head at me, squinting those sharp green eyes like she was assessing me instead of the other way around.

Her expression was so precise and so unbothered, it almost made me forget she was a child.

“I will tell you,” she said matter-of-factly, “but only after you take me there.”

I paused.

Then she added, as if negotiating a business deal, “Now, are you going to show me the playground or are you just going to stand there looking grumpy?”

A faint curve touched my lips before I could stop it. “The playground should be quite wet,” I said, glancing briefly down the corridor where rain had turned the outside paths into reflective glass. “But I have an idea.”

Her eyes lit up instantly.

She raised her tiny hand between us. “Promise me your idea is not to take me to my mum before you show me?”

A pinky promise.

I stared at it for a second longer than necessary.

Then, without really thinking why it mattered, I hooked my finger around hers.

“I promise,” I said quietly. “You’re going to like it. It’s somewhere children your age usually enjoy.”

She nodded like that was acceptable terms.

“Good,” she said proudly. “I’m Catherine. What is your name?”

“Lucien.”

She tested it on her tongue like she was deciding whether it suited me.

“Okay, Uncle Luca.”

“I didn’t say—”

She ignored me completely. “My Uncle Eli is a man-w***e,” she added casually, as though discussing the weather. “Because he is very handsome. I am happy to tell him I have found someone even more handsome.”

I froze for half a second.

Behind me, Marcus made a strangled sound like he was actively losing his will to live.

My gaze dropped to her.

“…He what?” I asked slowly.

She nodded with full confidence. “He is. Women always stare at him like he is a cake.”

That did it.

A low, reluctant breath of laughter left me before I could control it but somehow, something in my chest tightened.

She was too small to be wandering hallways like this and too trusting.

Marcus cleared his throat behind me.

“Boss, you have a meeting with—”

“Cancel it,” I said immediately..

Marcus blinked. “Sir?”

I didn’t look away from the child.

“Cancel it,” I repeated.

The girl tugged lightly at my sleeve. “So, Uncle Luca, where are we going?”