Chapter 3

Mara's POV

The results came back in thirty six hours. I knew they would confirm what I already knew. I had always known. The moment Colton looked at Lily's face across that room I understood that the life I had carefully constructed around a manageable lie was finished. I just hadn't known yet exactly what it looked like.

It looked like a phone call at seven in the morning with Colton's voice on the other end saying three words.

"She is mine."

He didn't say it with triumph. He didn't say it with emotion. He said it the way he said everything, flat and certain, like a fact being entered into a record. Then he told me to meet him at an address he texted immediately after and ended the call before I could respond.

I dropped Lily at my neighbor's apartment. She was a retired teacher named Carol who adored Lily and asked no questions, which was exactly what I needed that morning. I told Lily I had a work errand. Lily told me to bring her a juice box. I told her I would. Then I sat in my car for five minutes trying to prepare myself for a conversation I had no way to prepare for.

******************

The address was a legal office on the fourteenth floor of a glass building downtown. Clean, expensive, the kind of place where serious things happened to people who weren't ready for them. A receptionist showed me to a conference room without making eye contact. Colton was already inside. So was a man I didn't recognize — tall, broader than Colton, with the same grey eyes and a beard that needed attention. He introduced himself as Dominic Vance. Colton's brother and personal attorney.

That was when I understood this was not a conversation. This was already a proceeding.

Dominic slid a folder across the table toward me. Inside was a custody filing. Full physical and legal custody of Lily, citing the mother's deliberate concealment of the child's paternity for a period of four years. My hands were steady when I opened it but everything inside me was not.

I looked up at Colton. He was watching me read.

"You're filing for full custody," I said.

"I already filed," he said. "This morning."

The floor felt unsteady under my chair. I had known this was coming in some form. Knowing it and sitting across from the paperwork were two completely different experiences.

"She doesn't know you," I said. "She has never heard your name. You cannot walk into a court and take a four year old from the only parent she has ever known and expect that to be something a judge looks at favorably."

"You withheld my child for four years," Colton said. "I have documentation of the DNA result, the birth certificate listing no father, and a four year gap with zero contact attempts from your side. I have very good attorneys."

"I left because someone threatened me," I said. "Someone told me my presence put you in danger. I was twenty-five and pregnant and I believed it."

"You have said that twice now," he said. "Do you have the letter?"

I didn't answer immediately and that silence was its own kind of answer.

"Do you have any proof at all that this letter existed?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I don't. But that doesn't mean…….."

"It means exactly what it sounds like," he said. "It means you have a story and no evidence. And I have a DNA result and a birth certificate."

Dominic had been quiet through all of this. He shifted slightly in his seat and glanced at Colton before looking back at me. Something moved across his expression that I couldn't read. It was brief and then it was gone.

"There may be an alternative to the custody filing," Dominic said carefully.

Colton looked at him. Something passed between them that I couldn't fully follow.

"What alternative," I said.

Colton was quiet for a moment. He looked down at the folder, then back at me. When he spoke his voice was completely even.

"Marry me," he said. "I'll withdraw the custody dispute entirely in exchange for a legal marriage. Lily keeps both parents in the same home. No court involvement. No disruption to her routine."

I stared at him.

"You're serious," I said.

"I don't make jokes," he said.

"You want to marry me," I said slowly, "as a punishment."

"I want my daughter to have my name and my presence in her daily life," he said. "Marriage is the cleanest structure for that. You get to keep Lily at home. I get access to my child. It is straightforward."

"It is not straightforward," I said. "It is insane."

"You have seventy two hours to decide," he said. "If you decline, the custody case proceeds and I will win it. I have the resources to make that process very long and very expensive and I will use all of them. Or you agree, we marry quickly and quietly, and we figure the rest out as we go." He paused. "I am not asking you to love me, Mara. I stopped expecting things from you a long time ago. I am asking you to do the one thing that is best for our daughter."

That last part landed harder than anything else he had said. Because it was true and he knew it was true and using it was completely deliberate.

I stood up. My legs were steady. I was proud of that.

"Seventy two hours," I said.

"Seventy two hours," he confirmed.

I picked up my bag and walked to the door. I had my hand on the handle when Dominic spoke behind me, quietly, almost like he didn't intend for Colton to hear.

"Miss Ellis," he said. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry it came to this."

I turned and looked at him. There was something in his face. Something that looked almost like guilt.

"Are you?" I said.

He didn't answer. And somehow that told me more than anything else that had happened in that room.