“No.”

“They’re my children.”

“They are five-year-old boys who found out the truth in an airport because you couldn’t control yourself.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Once, that apology would have meant everything. Now it felt too small.

“They need time,” Emma said.

“I’m not asking to take them. I’m asking to understand.”

Finally, she agreed to meet him the next day in a public park. One hour. No lawyers. No security. No Marissa.

“Marissa no longer works for me,” Blake said coldly.

Emma froze.

He had checked the archived security logs. Emma had indeed come to his office five years earlier. She had stayed seventeen minutes before guards removed her on Marissa’s orders. Her calls had been redirected. Her emails filtered. Her letters destroyed.

“I told you,” Emma whispered.

“I know,” Blake said, and those two words carried more weight than any apology.

Then he asked about Daniel Reyes—the man he had believed was Emma’s lover.

“He wasn’t my lover,” Emma said. “He was a genetic counselor.”

Her mother’s neurological disease might have been hereditary. Emma had been getting tested before trying for children. The messages Blake had found were about clinic appointments and results.

“You never let me explain,” she said.

He had seen phrases like “I can’t tell Blake yet” and assumed betrayal. But the truth was fear. Emma had been afraid she might carry a dangerous genetic marker.

“The results were negative,” she told him. “I was going to tell you that night. I bought baby shoes. The blue box on the table.”

Blake whispered, “I threw it away.”

“I know.”

The next day, Blake arrived at the park without an entourage, wearing a navy sweater and holding three small bags from a toy store. He looked nervous.

Ethan approached first. “What’s in the bags?”

“Books,” Blake said. “And an apology.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes. “Do you know how to apologize?”

“I’m learning.”

Blake crouched carefully, giving them space.