Part 4 — After Seven Years of Devotion, My Boss Ordered Me to Find Him a Wife, but His Face Changed for the First Time at My Answer

Helen’s last words hung in the room.

Vincent picked up the paper and examined it as though he were seeing the signature for the first time.

“This is not my signature.”

“That is exactly what I am saying,” Helen replied. “Someone used your digital key.”

I was already calling Lika. The call was going through, but no one answered.

I called a second time.

A third time.

My knees gave way.

“Call the neighbor,” Vincent told me. “Right now.”

“I no longer take orders from you.”

His face changed, but this time he did not argue with me.

“Then you will receive help from me. That is your choice.”

Helen took out her phone and called the police. Vincent called his head of security.

“Lock all exits. Find the car that went to the school. No one touch the driver until I arrive.”

“You are going nowhere,” I stopped him.

“Why?”

“Because if that person is using your name, they are waiting for you to appear.”

Vincent fell silent.

For the first time in seven years, he believed me immediately.

Fifteen minutes later Helen received a message. Lika had been found at my neighbor Mrs. Nino’s. She truly had not gone to school; on the way she had seen a black car and turned onto another street, because she remembered what I always told her: if there is no familiar person inside a car, never go near it.

When I entered Nino’s apartment, Lika was sitting in the corner of the sofa and holding my old yellow box of cards. Since childhood I had kept her drawings there.

“Mom, why was that man saying my name?”

“Because he was trying badly to frighten you.”

“Was he from Vincent’s family?”

I could not answer.

Vincent was standing at the door. Lika saw him for the first time.

“Who is this?”

I knelt beside her.

“This is Vincent. A person who has many things to tell you.”

Vincent slowly sat down so that he would be at the child’s height.

“I am your father.”

Lika tilted her head to the side.

“Do fathers come this late?”

Vincent lowered his eyes.

“Sometimes they are so foolish that they are very late before they come.”

Lika thought for a while.

“You don’t know my birthday.”

“I know. March twenty-second.”

“My favorite color?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Green.”

“Now I know.”

There was no power in his voice anymore. No command. Only awkward truth.

That same evening everyone gathered at the Moretti family home. Eleanor stood by the fireplace, her arms crossed as though she could still control the situation.

“You should not bring the child here,” she said.

“This is my house,” Vincent replied.

“Not your house, your name. You cannot let her take everything from you.”

For the first time I intervened.

“Lika is taking nothing from you. You are simply afraid that you will no longer be able to use her.”

Eleanor looked at me.

“You deliberately hid the child for seven years.”

“Yes. And it was my most serious mistake. But even today you want to turn her into paper.”

Helen spread the fund statements across the table.

“Mrs. Moretti, you and Mr. Stefano were trying to withdraw funds from this trust. The child’s appearance interfered with your plan.”

Eleanor’s face went pale.

“That is slander.”

“Then let us listen to the recording,” Helen said.

She played the file.

Eleanor’s voice sounded in the room, sharp and cold:

“If Vincent has an heir, Maya must disappear. And we will acknowledge the child only when we can withdraw the money from the fund.”

Eleanor grabbed the arm of the chair.

Vincent stood motionless.

And I felt something strange: relief not because they had been exposed, but because this time my words no longer needed protection.

Then Eleanor’s own voice was recorded, as though some strange woman were speaking.

“The child must disappear before Vincent realizes that he is the father.”

Eleanor closed her eyes.

“That conversation was private.”

“No,” Helen said calmly. “This is evidence of a crime.”

That same night the police arrested Stefano Moretti for illegal use of the company archive and stalking the child. The court issued Eleanor a temporary restraining order. And Vincent sat all night in Nino’s kitchen while I put Lika to sleep.

In the morning his lawyer came to me.

“Mr. Moretti is ready to support you financially in full.”

“Not support. Responsibility.”

“That means the same thing.”

“No. Support can stop tomorrow. Responsibility must exist by agreement and by law.”

The lawyer looked at Vincent.

“Maya is right.”

Vincent nodded.

“Do everything as she requests.”

Then he looked toward me.

“You can stay at the company. I will change your position. You will no longer be my secretary.”

“I still cannot stay with you.”

“Because you hate me?”

“Because I want to choose my own life at least once without looking for a place in your schedule.”

He had no answer.

One week later, in court, he encountered for the first time the recording his family had created. The lawyer played the audio. His old voice, recorded seven years earlier, sounded in the room, after the night when I still had not said anything about the pregnancy.

“There is no place for a family in my life, and there never will be.”

Vincent raised his head.

“Did I say that?”

“Yes,” I answered.

He listened to his own voice as though he were listening to someone else’s confession. For the first time he understood that one indifferent sentence could silence a person for seven years.

When I left the courthouse, I entered my old office. I found the room almost empty. His meeting calendars and travel folders were no longer on the shelves. Only the burgundy pen remained on the corner of the desk.

Vincent had left it there for me.

A small note lay beneath it: “You deserved this long ago.”

I picked up the pen, but I did not follow him back.

Three months later I began working as an administrator at a small publishing house in Brooklyn. In the mornings I walked Lika to school, then walked two tram stops. On my new desk, instead of coffee, there was warm tea, and beside the window hung a house drawn by Lika.

There were four windows in the drawing.

“Why four?” I asked.

“Because there should always be light in our house,” she answered.

Vincent began seeing Lika twice a week. At first the child was awkward. Then she became interested in why her father did not know the names of cartoon characters, why he laughed so rarely, and why he always wore black.

Vincent was learning.

Not business.

Fatherhood.

On the first snow of winter, Lika made a small snowman in the yard. Vincent stood beside her with his hands in his pockets, because he did not know how to hold the child’s cold mitten.

“Dad,” Lika called, “give me a bigger stone.”

Vincent smiled.

It was the simplest word that had ever brought light to his face.

Six months later my phone received a message from an unknown number.

“Maya, I know it is late. But if you ever think about returning, my door will be open.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote back.

“Your door may be open, Vincent. But I already live in my own home.”

Sending it brought no fear.

No guilt either.

Only peace.

That evening Lika found my old burgundy pen on the shelf and asked me:

“Why is it broken?”

“Because once I dropped it very badly.”

“And why didn’t you throw it away?”

I held the pen in my hand. The silver clip was still scratched, but now it no longer reminded me of the man I had spent seven years waiting for.

“Because even a broken thing can become the beginning of a new story.”

Lika placed the pen on the paper and drew her house.

This time it had five windows.

Snow was falling outside.

I closed the pen and, for the first time, was no longer waiting for anyone.