Lahat ng Kabanata ng HIS SECRET SON: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

Alexandre's POVThree years.That was the number sitting in the center of my chest like a blade while I looked at the woman across my desk — the woman I had spent a significant and embarrassing portion of the last three years trying not to think about.I had failed, for the record. Tried and failed, repeatedly, in the specific way that you fail at something you pretend isn't happening. A face that surfaced without invitation. A laugh I heard once in a crowded restaurant that made me turn around so fast I knocked over a wine glass. Small, inconvenient hauntings that I had attributed to the particular intensity of that night and refused to examine further.I was examining it now.She was sitting across from me in a blazer that was slightly too big for her — borrowed, maybe, or bought for an older version of herself — with her hands folded in her lap and her green eyes doing something complicated that I recognised as the expression of a person deciding how much truth they could afford to

Alexandre's POVI arrived at three-forty-five.Of course I did.The nursery was a small building on a quiet street in the 9th arrondissement — cheerful yellow signage, children's drawings taped inside the windows, a low gate painted blue that a man in my position had absolutely no business standing outside of in a four-thousand-euro suit.I had changed. Twice. Which was not something I did. I was not someone who stood in front of a wardrobe reconsidering his choices — I made decisions, I moved on, I did not revisit. And yet I had stood in my apartment at three p.m. looking at my reflection and thinking, for the first time in my adult life, about what a child might think of me.Not a board. Not a client. Not a rival.A child. My child.I had settled on dark trousers and a shirt with the collar open — still structured, because I didn't know how to be anything else, but without the full armour of the suit jacket. A small concession to approachability. Whether it worked, I had no idea. I

Claire's POVMargaux arrived at 7:03 p.m. with wine, cheese, and the expression of a woman who had been waiting all day to have this conversation and was done being patient about it.I had barely opened the door before she was inside, bag on the counter, wine already being uncorked with the efficiency of someone who had assessed the situation and prescribed accordingly."Theo asleep?" she said."Ten minutes ago.""Good." She poured two glasses, pushed one across the counter toward me, and leaned both elbows on the kitchen surface with the focused energy of someone settling in for something significant. "Start talking.""I told you everything on the phone—""You told me the facts. I want the rest." She picked up her glass. "I want the parts you left out because you were processing them yourself. The parts where you felt things."I looked at my wine.This was the problem with best friends who had known you since university. They understood the precise difference between what you said an

Claire's POVI cried in the car on the way home.Not dramatically — not the kind of crying that requires explanation or produces sounds. The quiet kind. The kind that arrives without warning when you have been holding something carefully for a very long time and one small thing — a child's hands cupped around a worm, a word said through a glass door without ceremony — causes the structural integrity of the whole careful hold to give way without permission.Theo was asleep in his car seat within four minutes of leaving the 16th arrondissement. He did this — crashed completely after mornings of high emotional and physical investment, going from full operational capacity to deeply unconscious with no intermediate stage. I envied it. I had not slept that efficiently in three years.I drove and let the tears happen and didn't make anything of them.Papa.I had prepared for many things. I had prepared for Theo to be shy, to hide behind my leg, to refuse to speak for the first forty minutes

Claire's POVI discovered the problem with living in a billionaire's house on Friday morning.Not the size — I had adjusted to the size with more ease than expected, largely because Theo had claimed the ground floor with the territorial confidence of a small person who understood instinctively that occupation was nine-tenths of ownership and had distributed his things accordingly. Gerald on the kitchen counter. Three stones from the garden on the hallway windowsill. A drawing — boat, waves, what I believed was intended to be a lighthouse but resembled a large sock — sellotaped to the refrigerator at knee height.Alexandre had not moved any of it.This was the thing I kept catching myself noting. The way he reconfigured himself around Theo's presence without comment or negotiation — stepping around the stones, acknowledging Gerald on the counter with the same gravity Theo expected, looking at the lighthouse-sock drawing for a long moment before going to find sellotape to reinforce a co