Chapter 10 - Living in the Shadow of Shattered Glass
When Victor stepped into the small mudroom of the farmhouse, he looked like a broken shell of a man.
His lips were tinged blue from the cold; his expensive tactical gear was soaked through with melting snow and mud. He stood awkwardly on the rubber mat by the door, his hands clasped tightly in front of him, his head bowed.
In the kitchen, thirty feet away, Nora was sitting by the woodstove, gently bottle-feeding Leo while Mia slept in a wooden crib Caleb had brought down from the attic—a crib his own children had used forty years ago.
Victor stared at his son drinking greedily from the bottle. A single, silent tear carved a path through the grime on his cheek.
"He looks good," Victor whispered, his voice cracking.
"He looks alive," Nora replied without looking up from Leo’s face. "No thanks to you."
Victor flinched. "I broke off everything with Sylvia."
"I don't care," Nora said coldly. "You think this is just about Sylvia Vance? You think this is just about another pretty socialite you slept with behind my back?"
She looked up, her gray eyes burning with five years of suppressed agony.
"This is about the fact that you turned our life into a battlefield, Victor. You treated our marriage like an acquisition. You treated my pregnancy like an inconvenience. When Leo and Mia were born six weeks early and fighting for their lives in plastic boxes, you couldn't stand the sight of weakness. You couldn't handle the fact that your money couldn't buy them healthy lungs. So you ran to a woman who made you feel like a king while I was falling apart in an empty penthouse."
Victor dropped his head into his hands. "I was terrified, Nora."
"I was terrified too!" Nora screamed, her voice shaking the small mudroom. "I was twenty-four years old, cut open on an operating table, bleeding and terrified that my babies were going to die! But I didn't run into the arms of another man! I stayed by their cribs!"
"I know," Victor wept openly, making no effort to hide his tears. "I know. I am a coward, Nora. I have spent my whole life building an empire because I thought if I was strong enough, rich enough, ruthless enough, nothing could ever hurt me. But when I saw Leo hooked up to those machines... I felt completely powerless. And instead of holding you, instead of being the husband you deserved, I ran like a pathetic child."
He looked up at her, his dark eyes pleading for nothing more than the truth.
"I don't expect you to ever forgive me," Victor said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I don't deserve your forgiveness. I don't deserve to be their father. If you want me out of your life, I will sign the divorce papers tomorrow. I will give you full custody. I will transfer ninety percent of the Rinaldi trust into your name, and I will never show my face near you again."
Nora stared at him, her chest heaving.
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"Then why did you come here?" she whispered.
"Because I couldn't live in a world where you and the twins died in the snow thinking I didn't love you," Victor said, the raw honesty in his voice hanging in the warm kitchen air. "I needed to know you were safe. That's all. Just safe."
