Chapter 5: The Truth About Vivian

**ROMAN**

He didn't sleep that night.

He sat in his study, laptop open, staring at the paternity report his investigator had rushed over at midnight. The guy had pulled strings at the preschool — something about medical records from a routine check-up — and gotten a sample matched against Roman's DNA.

The result was one line of text.

**Probability of biological paternity: 99.9999%**

Roman read it eleven times.

His daughter.

She was really his daughter.

He had a three-year-old girl with pigtails and a mole on her lip and a laugh that could be heard across a soccer field, and she didn't know his name, and she thought he was dead.

He pulled up the photo he'd taken at Sports Day — he'd snapped it without thinking, hands shaking, when Nadia had crouched down to draw in the sand with a stick. Pigtails. Red sneakers. That little mole.

He stared at it until his vision blurred.

Then something else pushed through. Cold. Sharp. The kind of thought that arrives like a knife between the ribs.

Vivian's baby.

Three years ago, Vivian had told him she was pregnant. That was the whole reason he'd divorced Serena — one Cheng heir, that's what his mother had said. Vivian's child over Serena's. The legitimate one. The *right* one.

Two months after Serena left, Vivian said she'd had a miscarriage. Terrible luck. Margaret had been right there, rubbing Vivian's back, saying she was delicate, saying she needed time to recover, saying these things happen.

And Roman had believed it.

Because why wouldn't he? His mother wouldn't lie to him. The woman he loved wouldn't lie to him.

But now.

Serena had been eight months pregnant and they'd pushed her out the door. Two months later — *two months* — Vivian conveniently lost the baby that had been the entire reason for the divorce.

Roman's jaw tightened.

He picked up his phone.

"I need another investigation," he said. His voice was so cold it didn't sound like his own. "Vivian Wu's pregnancy three years ago. The clinic that issued the diagnosis. Whether she was ever actually pregnant. I want bank records, I want the doctor's name, and I want it by Friday."

---

The results came in three days later.

Roman sat at his desk and spread the documents out, one by one, like a man disarming a bomb.

The pregnancy diagnosis was fake.

The doctor who'd signed it — a Dr. Harold Fenn at a private clinic downtown — had lost his medical license two years ago. Cause: issuing fraudulent medical certifications. His practice had been shut down. His name was still in the state database, flagged in red.

The payment trail was clean. A single wire transfer, forty-eight thousand dollars, from a personal account at First National.

The account holder's name: **Margaret Cheng.**

Roman read it twice.

Then a third time.

Then he put the paper down on the desk, very carefully, the way you set down something explosive.

His mother.

His own mother had paid a doctor to forge a pregnancy report for Vivian Wu.

She had orchestrated the lie that destroyed his marriage, drove his pregnant wife out of the house, and separated him from his daughter for three years. She'd done it with a wire transfer and a forged document, and then she'd sat at her dining table and sipped her tea and called Serena an orphan who didn't deserve to breathe the Cheng family's air.

Roman stood up.

His fist hit the desk before he knew he was swinging. Wood cracked. His knuckles split open. Blood ran down his fingers and dripped onto the fake pregnancy report, and he didn't feel any of it.

---

Margaret was on the living room sofa when he walked in. Sheet mask on. Hair in a silk wrap. Vivian beside her, peeling a tangerine, legs curled beneath her on the cushion like a house cat.

"Mom," Vivian was saying, "that jewelry auction next week — I saw this gorgeous emerald pendant. Do you think Roman would—"

"Whatever you want, sweetheart. Just tell him I said yes."

"You're the best, Mom."

The front door slammed open hard enough to bounce off the wall.

Roman stood in the doorway.

He looked like he hadn't slept in days, because he hadn't. Bloodshot eyes. Clenched jaw. A bruised and swollen right hand hanging at his side.

Margaret startled so hard her sheet mask peeled half off. "Roman? What on earth — who did this to—"

He didn't speak.

He walked to the coffee table and dropped the stack of documents in front of her. Papers fanned out across the glass. The fake diagnosis. Dr. Fenn's licensing record. The bank statement with her name on it.

Margaret's face went white.

Vivian's tangerine hit the floor.

"What... what is this..." Margaret's voice cracked.

"You tell me." Roman's voice was quiet. So quiet. The kind of quiet that comes right before everything breaks. "Go ahead, Mom. Explain."

Margaret's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. He could see her cycling through options — denial, deflection, blaming Serena, blaming the investigator, claiming the documents were faked.

But the bank statement had her name on it. Her account number. Her signature on the authorization form. There was nowhere to hide.

So she went the other direction.

"I did it for YOU!" She ripped off the sheet mask and threw it on the floor. Her voice jumped an octave, shrill and defensive, the sound of a woman who'd been cornered and decided to go down swinging. "A girl like Serena — no parents, no family, no connections — you think she was good enough to give the Cheng family an heir? I'm your MOTHER, Roman! Everything I've done has been to protect this family! Vivian is from a *proper* background. She understands how things work. She—"

"Proper background?" Roman laughed.

It was the ugliest sound he'd ever made.

"Mom. Serena's grandfather was Lincoln Sun."

Margaret blinked.

"She inherited fifteen billion dollars the day I threw her out of this house."

Silence.

"Cheng Corp's entire net worth is a rounding error on her balance sheet."

Margaret's mouth was open. No sound came out. Her face had gone from white to gray — the color of ash, the color of a woman watching the ground disappear beneath her feet.

"So tell me again," Roman said, "about *proper backgrounds*."

Margaret tried once more. "She — she still — her upbringing—"

Roman looked at her.

He looked at the woman who'd raised him, who'd told him every day that the Cheng name mattered more than anything, who'd shaped his entire understanding of what a person was worth.

And felt nothing.

Not anger. Not sadness. Just an enormous, bone-deep weariness, like he'd been carrying something heavy for a very long time and had only just realized he could put it down.

He turned and walked out.

"Roman! ROMAN! Where are you going!"

He didn't answer. The door closed behind him.

---

Vivian's apartment was fifteen minutes away.

She was already crying when he got there — Margaret must have called ahead. The second he walked through the door, she threw herself at him, grabbing his arm, pressing her face against his chest.

"Roman, please — let me explain — it wasn't my idea, your mother made me do it, I was scared, I didn't have a choice—"

He stepped sideways. She stumbled forward, catching herself on the back of the couch. Her mascara was running. Her lower lip was trembling. The wounded-bird look — the one that had worked on him every single time for three years.

She looked up at him with wet, desperate eyes.

Roman felt nothing.

"One question," he said. His voice was flat. Dead. Like a phone that had been disconnected. "Were you ever actually pregnant?"

Vivian's crying stopped.

Not gradually. All at once. Like someone had hit mute.

She stared at him. Searching his face for the crack she usually found — the softness, the guilt, the reflex to protect her. The place where she could slip in a trembling lip and a whispered *I love you* and get whatever she wanted.

It wasn't there.

There was nothing in his eyes. Nothing at all.

She knew it was over.

"I... I loved you so much, Roman." The tears came back, harder now, ugly and real for the first time. "I was terrified of losing you. This was the only way I could stay — the only way your mother would accept me. I know it was wrong but I did it because I love—"

"Stop."

One word. She stopped.

"Love." He said it like he was tasting something rotten. "You faked a pregnancy. You let my mother pay a doctor to forge a medical report. You stood in my living room and watched me hand divorce papers to my wife — my *pregnant* wife — and you didn't say a word. And you want to call that love?"

Vivian opened her mouth.

"We're done," Roman said.

He turned and walked to the door.

"Roman!" she screamed behind him. "You can't just — three YEARS — you can't just walk away from three years—"

His hand was on the knob. He paused.

"Three years?" he said, without turning around. The exhaustion in his voice was absolute. "Right now all I feel is sick."

He pulled the door open and walked through it.

It clicked shut behind him.

On the other side, Vivian slid to the floor, mascara streaking her face, sobs echoing off the walls of an apartment she'd furnished with someone else's money.

Nobody came back.

---

In the parking garage, Roman sat in his car with the engine off.

He opened his phone. Scrolled to his contacts. Found the folder labeled **Blocked**.

There was one number in it.

**Serena Sun.**

He'd put it there himself. Three years ago. The same day he'd told her to get out.

His thumb hovered over her name. Shaking.

He didn't press it.

He started the engine. Typed an address into the navigation screen.

Serena's company. Downtown. The building with her name on it — not the Cheng name, not anyone else's name. Hers.

He was going to find her. He was going to say he was sorry. He was going to fix this.

The car pulled out of the garage and into the evening traffic.

Roman didn't know it yet — the thing that would take him months to learn, and years to accept.

Some doors, once you close them, don't open from the outside.

No matter how long you stand there knocking.