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Marcus stood frozen, the weight of Eleanor’s confession hanging heavy in the air. Her words echoed in his ears, but his mind was already spiraling. Not just with shock. Not just with betrayal.
But with grief.
Grief for the five years he had lost. The birthdays he’d missed. The milestones — first words, first steps, scraped knees, and laughter he’d never heard. That boy… his boy. Leo.
And Eleanor had stolen it all from him.
The guilt clawed at his chest like something alive. He should’ve asked questions, should’ve seen through the lies in those emails — but it was drowned now by something sharper. Hotter.
Fury.
“You’re right,” Marcus finally said, his voice a low growl of something broken. “I should have asked about those damn emails. I should’ve trusted you.” His fists clenched at his sides as his voice rose. “But you… you’ve known who I was for weeks. You worked beside me. You slept with me. And you said nothing. Nothing.”
He stepped forward like he didn’t trust himself to stand still. “You kept my son from me, Eleanor. You looked me in the eye every day, and you let me believe he didn’t exist.”
Eleanor turned slowly, her eyes dark with hurt, but calm — too calm. “I was scared, Marcus.”
“Scared?” he snapped. “Scared of what? That I might love him? That I might want to be in his life?” His voice broke, then hardened again. “Or scared that I’d take him from you?”
She flinched. But he was already spiraling.
“You had no right.” His voice thundered in the small apartment, echoing off the walls. “No right to decide whether or not I got to know my own child. That decision was never yours to make alone.”
“And you had the right to believe some nameless email over everything I ever was to you?” Eleanor shot back, her voice suddenly raw. “You didn’t even ask. You didn’t even hesitate.”
“This isn’t the same thing!” Marcus barked, spinning away from her. His hands went to his temples as if he could scrub away the weight of her words. “This is my son! You lied, Eleanor. You manipulated me—”
“No,” she said sharply. “I protected myself. I protected him. You don’t get to play the victim in this. Not after the way you looked at me like I was poison. Like I meant nothing.”
That stopped him.
For one dizzying second, he wasn’t angry.
He was undone.
And then the walls snapped back into place.
“I want a DNA test,” he said coldly. “I want confirmation. After that… we’ll talk about custody. About what you’ve done.”
He didn’t wait for her to reply. He couldn’t. Her face — wounded but unyielding — threatened to unravel him all over again.
So he turned.
He strode to the door and ripped it open, pausing only once to glance toward the hallway where the boy slept, blissfully unaware. His son. His.
It nearly buckled him.
But he slammed the door behind him instead, letting the sound punctuate his rage.
He didn’t call his driver. He couldn’t stomach being around anyone. He just walked — hard and fast and aimless — through streets that blurred together beneath the haze of fury and heartbreak.
Hours later, he found himself outside a dim bar with no memory of how he got there. The burn of whiskey did little to numb the storm in his chest.
He had a son.
And he hadn’t even known his name.
The betrayal stung like hell. But it was the loss that gutted him.
Eleanor’s POV: After the Storm
The door slammed behind him with a finality that shook the picture frames on the wall. The echo of Marcus’s rage still reverberated in the small apartment, even as silence reclaimed the space.
Eleanor stood frozen in the middle of the living room, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her legs felt weak, like her body might collapse under the weight of everything she’d just endured.
She had known this moment would come.
Had feared it from the day Leo was born.
But nothing — nothing — had prepared her for the reality of Marcus’s fury. The betrayal in his voice. The fire in his eyes. Like she had broken something sacred.
She stumbled backward, sinking onto the edge of the couch, her fingers trembling against her lips. Her heart pounded like it didn’t know whether to break or burst.
This is why I kept him a secret.
The words rang inside her skull like a cruel anthem.
She had been right to be afraid.
Marcus hadn’t just been angry. He had been ruined. His rage had devoured every tender moment they had shared — the softness in Chicago, the intimacy of their kiss in the elevator, the quiet way he had once looked at her like she was something fragile and irreplaceable.
All of it was gone.
Rewritten as lies in his eyes.
And now…
Now there were new fears clawing their way to the surface. Real, jagged ones.
He’ll take Leo from me.
He had the resources. The lawyers. The reputation. If he truly wanted to punish her, he could make her out to be unstable. Deceptive. Dangerous, even. A woman who kept a child from his father out of pride or spite.
And if Sienna found out—
Her stomach twisted.
If Sienna found out, she'd make sure Marcus never forgave her. She’d poison him with her calculated venom, twist every fragile thread left between them until Eleanor was cast as nothing but a mistake.
A threat to his legacy.
Eleanor pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, but the tears came anyway — hot, fast, and silent. Her chest heaved as the magnitude of what had just happened consumed her.
She could lose her son.
Not physically. Not today. But something had shifted. A line had been crossed.
The fragile life she had built — the lies she had told to keep it intact — were collapsing.
And she had no one to blame but herself.
She hadn’t lied to hurt him. She had lied to survive. To protect Leo. To protect herself. But now, with Marcus’s fury still echoing through her bones, it felt like every choice had been the wrong one.
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
She didn’t want to answer.
She didn’t want to talk.
But when she saw Lea’s name flashing across the screen, something inside her cracked. She reached for it with shaking hands.
“Lea,” she breathed.
“Hey,” Lea said gently. “I just got your text. I’m five minutes away.”
“I—” Eleanor swallowed hard. “He knows. He came. He saw Leo. And… he lost it.”
“Oh, El.” Lea’s voice tightened, sympathetic and sharp. “I’m almost there, okay? Just hang on.”
The line went dead, but it didn’t matter.
Eleanor curled into herself on the couch, hugging a throw pillow like it might hold her together. For the first time in five years, she didn’t know what came next. All she knew was that Marcus hated her.
And maybe, just maybe, he had every reason to.
But she still had Leo.
And Lea.
And somehow, with what little strength she had left, she’d find a way to hold onto both.
