CHAPTER FOUR
1458 Words
Elena
My apartment smelled like lavender, crayons, and unpaid bills.
I hadn’t stepped inside in almost three days, and the moment the door creaked open, moaning like it resented me for leaving the truth of my double life, punched me square in the gut.
Here, I wasn’t a servant in a penthouse. I wasn’t a scorned ex-fiancée or a puppet in some billionaire’s revenge game.
Here, I was just Sophie’s mom.
I dropped my tote beside the couch and took a slow breath. Sunlight filtered through the gauzy curtains, catching flecks of dust in the air. Sophie’s sketches were still taped to the peeling walls, stick figures with wild curls and smiling suns, little bees in purple marker labeled “Mr. Bumble’s army.”
I was home.
Kind of.
Lena’s voice drifted in from the back room, singing softly in Russian. A lullaby I remembered from my childhood. The one she used to sing when I cried through fevers and fear.
I followed the sound to Sophie’s room.
She was asleep, curled up in the center of the tiny twin bed, surrounded by a sea of stuffed animals. Mr. Bumble sat proudly at her feet, guarding her like a knight made of polyester.
My chest ached with love. That sweet, aching kind of love that felt too big for a body to hold.
Lena looked up from her rocking chair, a knowing smile already on her lips.
“Three days,” she said softly. “And already she started a protest. Refused broccoli. Cried at bedtime. Called you a ‘working mommymonster.’”
I laughed under my breath and wiped at my eyes. “She’s too smart.”
“She’s yours,” Lena said, standing slowly. Her floral dress fluttered like a memory. “And she’ll forgive you.”
I kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”
She squeezed my hand. “I’ll leave you two. You rest. I’ll be back tomorrow with groceries. There’s soup on the stove. And tea. You still take it with lemon and revenge, yes?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
She slipped out quietly, and I sat beside Sophie, brushing a hand through her curls.
She murmured something in her sleep. I leaned closer.
“...Mommy’s sad,” she whispered.
God.
I bit down on a sob and kissed her temple. “Not anymore, baby. I’m right here.”
An hour later, I was reheating the soup Lena made when someone banged on the door.
Not knocked. Banged.
I jumped, setting the ladle down and wiping my hands on my skirt.
Another knock, this one sharp, impatient.
I moved to the door and peered through the peephole.
And nearly screamed.
Alexander.
In my hallway.
In this building.
He stood like a shadow carved in designer black, eyes colder than the November wind. People from this block didn’t wear that much cash on their backs without getting jumped. The cracked linoleum beneath his shoes felt offended by his presence.
I opened the door only halfway. “Are you lost?”
He looked me up and down.
“You live here?”
I crossed my arms. “What are you doing in the Bronx?”
“I followed you.”
I blinked. “You what?”
“I checked your file. Your work schedule didn’t account for time off. I saw you leave. I got curious.”
“That’s not curiosity. That’s stalking.”
His mouth tightened. “You took a child from my household without permission.”
“My daughter is not your property.”
Silence.
Just like that, I’d said it.
Not the whole truth.
But enough.
His eyes sharpened. “You said you miscarried.”
“I lied.”
He didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
But the air shifted.
“I needed to protect her,” I said quietly. “From you. From your mother. From everything.”
His jaw clenched.
“You hid her from me.”
“She almost died the week she was born. I was alone. Homeless. Eating saltines in a shelter because my parents were dead, the gallery was gone, and you were on the news calling me a criminal.”
He looked away.
For once, he didn’t have a cruel retort ready.
“Her name is Sophie,” I said. “She’s smart and strange and beautiful, and she thinks Mr. Bumble runs an army of bees. She was born with Tetralogy of Fallot. We’ve been in and out of hospitals since she was two days old.”
He inhaled sharply. “Heart disease?”
“Yes. She needs surgery. I’ve been trying to raise the money for months. That’s why I took your job. Not because I wanted to see you again. Not because I wanted revenge. Because my daughter needed to live.”
The weight of it all settled between us.
And then his voice cracked. Just barely.
“I missed her entire life.”
I closed my eyes. “You missed it because you believed your mother instead of me.”
He didn’t argue.
Didn’t defend himself.
He just stood there, shaking, and for the first time, I saw it:
Regret.
Real. Bone-deep. Unpolished.
I opened the door wider.
“Come in,” I said.
He stepped inside.
And recoiled.
His gaze swept over the apartment, tiny, cluttered, threadbare.
His voice dropped. “You lived like this?”
“Yes. And so does half the city. Welcome to real life, Alexander.”
His eyes landed on Sophie’s drawings. On the chipped table with mismatched chairs. The laundry is drying near the radiator. On a little pink sweater with a sewn patch shaped like a heart.
He picked it up. Gently. Like it might burn him.
“She wore this?”
“She sewed the patch herself.”
He set it down carefully. Reverently.
Like an offering.
I didn’t know what to make of him. Of this silent, broken version of the man who once destroyed me.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do when the world felt like it was spinning too fast.
I made tea.
We sat at the tiny kitchen table, legs bumping beneath the wood, while I poured the lemon-honey blend into chipped mugs.
He sipped it slowly.
And then asked, “Why didn’t you ever come to me? Even after?”
I looked him dead in the eye.
“Because you made it clear I was nothing.”
He didn’t deny it.
Didn’t say he’d changed.
Just whispered, “I never stopped wondering.”
“And yet, you never looked.”
He exhaled and set the mug down.
“She’s mine.”
I didn’t answer.
He stood suddenly and walked down the short hallway toward Sophie’s room.
I followed on instinct, heart hammering.
She was still asleep.
He stopped in the doorway.
His shadow fell across her tiny frame like a protective, massive, uncertain wall.
“She looks like you,” he whispered.
“She has your eyes.”
He took a shaky breath.
Then, softer: “Can I hold her?”
The question undid me.
Not a demand. Not a declaration.
Just a father who never knew he was one.
“She’s sleeping.”
He nodded and stepped back.
But his hands… they were trembling.
Twenty minutes later, he stood by the door, unsure.
I leaned against the wall, exhausted.
“What now?” I asked.
His voice was low. “Now I give her what she deserves.”
I raised a brow. “And what’s that?”
“Everything.”
I scoffed. “Money won’t fix this.”
“I know,” he said. “But it can save her life.”
Something about the way he said it seemed final.
Desperate.
Hopeful.
I crossed my arms. “You think this changes things?”
“It changes everything.”
“No. Your knowledge doesn’t erase what happened. Are you hiring me under pretenses? Parading some child as a decoy? That doesn’t vanish because Sophie’s blood matches yours.”
He stepped closer. “So what do you want?”
I looked him in the eye.
“Justice.”
A pause.
Then “For you? Or her?”
I didn’t answer.
He left without another word.
And I stood in the doorway long after he was gone, shaking.
Because I didn’t know which answer scared me more.
The next day, an eviction notice appeared on my door.
Bright red ink.
Final warning.
Two weeks.
That afternoon, Lena called, crying.
“I just got a visit,” she said. “From a man in a suit. Thorne Property Board. Said the building’s being sold.”
My heart plummeted.
Victoria.
She knew.
She was circling.
And just like that, I understood:
This war wasn’t going to wait.
- Writer
