Chapter 1 - The Glass Between Us
The doctor looked me in the eye and told me the infertility that destroyed my first marriage had never been my fault, and minutes later I saw my ex-wife pushing twin babies past the restaurant where I sat with my new wife. I had spent years believing I had made the right choice, but one glance at those children was about to force me to question everything I had been told. And the twins were not even the most shocking truth waiting for me.
My name is Luca Moretti, and the day I trusted Victor over Natalie was the day I destroyed myself.
“There is no fertility problem on your end, Mr. Moretti.”
The doctor’s words followed me long after I left his office.
I had seen specialists before. Two in Chicago. One in New York. Every test came back the same. Nothing was wrong with me.
And suddenly, the explanation I had accepted for years began falling apart.
Natalie. My first wife. The woman who had sat beside me through every appointment, every test, every soul-crushing disappointment. She had taken the vitamins, tracked every hopeful date on the calendar, and cried quietly in the dark when she thought I couldn't hear her.
And instead of standing beside her, I had listened when someone I trusted—my older brother and business partner, Victor—suggested she might be the problem.
“Maybe she’s hiding something, Luca,” Victor had whispered over drinks four years ago. “Maybe she had medical issues before you met. Love is making you blind, little brother. She’s keeping you from having an heir to Moretti Logistics.”
I never screamed at Natalie. I never directly accused her. I did something far quieter, and far more cruel.
I became cold. I stayed at the office late into the night. I answered her heartbreaking tears with icy silence.
Then one snowy evening, I finally looked at the woman who had once trusted me completely and said the words that shattered her world into pieces.
“I don’t think I love you the way I used to.”
Natalie had stared at me with wide, pain-filled eyes. She didn’t yell. She didn’t throw things. She only asked one quiet question.
“Is this really what you want, Luca?”
I said yes. It was the biggest lie of my life.
Four years later, I was sitting across from my second wife, Evelyn, in an high-end bistro in downtown Chicago, trying to make sense of what the top fertility specialist had just confirmed. Evelyn was speaking animatedly about home decor, but I barely heard a word.
Then, movement beyond the polished restaurant windows caught my attention.
A woman was pushing a double stroller along the sunlit sidewalk. Something about the way she held her shoulders made my heart stop.
I stared through the glass. She turned her head slightly.
Natalie.
For a second, everything around me faded into blur. The bustling restaurant, the ambient chatter, the artificial life I had built after walking away from her—all of it vanished.
Because Natalie was not alone. Inside the double stroller sat two beautiful infants. Twins.
I could not move. I could barely breathe.
One of the babies turned toward the window. A little boy. Dark curls frame his face. A round, sweet chin.
Then I saw his eyes. Bright, distinctive hazel-green eyes with a silver ring around the pupil. My eyes. The exact, unmistakable genetic trait passed down through three generations of Moretti men.
My chest tightened so fiercely I choked on air. Beside the boy sat a little girl wrapped in a pale blue blanket. Natalie leaned down, offering a tender smile, gently adjusting the fabric around her shoulder. That simple, loving movement hurt more than any loud accusation she could have ever hurled at me.
Evelyn followed my frozen stare. “Luca? Do you know her?”
I couldn’t answer. My voice was trapped in my throat.
Outside, Natalie looked up. Our eyes met through the glass.
Her hand froze on the leather handlebar of the stroller. She recognized me immediately. She didn’t smile. She didn’t wave. She just stood there on the busy sidewalk, bathed in the cool autumn air. And in that frozen second, every year of distance between us dissolved into thin air.
The pedestrian signal turned green. Natalie lowered her eyes, tightened her grip, and began pushing the stroller away into the crowd.
I shot to my feet so fast my chair struck the table behind me, clattering against the floor.
“Luca!” Evelyn called after me, startled and annoyed.
May you like
But I was already moving toward the exit, my mind wildly spinning out of control. Because after four long years of believing Natalie was the reason we couldn't have a family, I had just watched her walk away with twins.
And that little boy had my eyes.
