Chapter 2 - The Man Waiting at the Door
Mateo did not allow Celeste to go downstairs.
“Nora.”
The nanny immediately understood.
She carried Owen into the nearby sitting room while keeping the baby within Mateo’s sight.
Ellie remained behind her father.
Celeste pressed one hand against her reddened cheek.
“Mateo, please.”
He held up the yellow diary.
“You don’t get to tell me what happens next.”
The doorbell rang a third time.
Mateo walked downstairs with Ellie’s hand in his.
He opened the front door himself.
A man stood outside.
Late thirties.
Dark blond hair.
Rain beginning to collect across the shoulders of his jacket.
He looked past Mateo.
Into the house.
Then his eyes found Celeste standing at the top of the stairs.
The man’s expression hardened.
“You said you’d finally tell him.”
Celeste whispered:
“Lucas.”
Mateo looked between them.
“Who are you?”
The man swallowed.
“Lucas Warren.”
The name meant nothing.
Then Lucas looked toward the sitting room where Nora was holding Owen.
Everything about his face changed.
“Is that him?”
Mateo felt the hallway become impossibly quiet.
“Is that who?”
Lucas looked directly at him.
“My son.”
Nora instinctively tightened her hold around Owen.
Celeste came down two stairs.
“Lucas, shut up.”
Mateo slowly turned toward her.
Then opened the yellow diary again.
One entry now made horrible sense.
L.W. knows about Owen.
Need him quiet until after wedding.
Never let Mateo compare dates.
Mateo had read those lines upstairs without understanding who L.W. was.
Now he did.
He looked at Celeste.
“You told me Owen was mine.”
“He is yours.”
Lucas laughed once.
Bitterly.
“That’s not what you told me.”
Celeste’s eyes flashed.
“I told you to leave.”
“And I did.”
Lucas looked at Mateo.
“For ten months.”
Mateo’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“Start at the beginning.”
Celeste interrupted.
“He’s lying.”
Lucas reached into his coat.
Mateo’s entire body tensed.
Lucas stopped immediately and raised one hand.
“Phone.”
He slowly removed it and unlocked a series of photographs.
No private medical records.
No dramatic DNA certificate.
Photographs.
Celeste and Lucas together.
Dates spanning the period Mateo and Celeste had been engaged.
One photograph showed Celeste asleep against Lucas’s shoulder six weeks before she told Mateo she was pregnant.
Another showed a text from Celeste:
If he believes the timing, Owen gets the life I want for him.
Mateo stared.
Still not absolute biological proof.
Enough to understand deception.
He looked toward Owen.
The baby was chewing harmlessly on the corner of his blanket, unaware that three adults had just turned his identity into a battlefield.
Mateo immediately rejected that thought.
Owen was not a battlefield.
He was a child.
“Whatever happens,” Mateo said, looking at both Celeste and Lucas, “nobody is taking that baby anywhere tonight.”
Lucas nodded.
“I’m not here to grab him.”
“Then why are you here?”
Lucas looked at the yellow diary.
“Because Celeste called me this morning.”
Celeste went rigid.
“She said she was burning that.”
Mateo looked down at the diary.
Lucas continued.
“She told me if that book ever turned up, everything about Owen would come out.”
A beat.
“And whatever she wrote about Maren would come out too.”
Ellie heard the name.
Her mother’s name.
She stepped around Mateo.
“What about Mommy?”
May you like
Celeste closed her eyes.
And Mateo realized the paternity lie was only the first secret the diary contained.
