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

That morning Vincent Moretti ordered me to find him a wife, and twenty-four hours later my resignation lay on his desk.

First he looked at the envelope, then at me, and finally at the untouched espresso, whose thin foam had already gone flat. On the forty-third floor of Manhattan, snow was silently falling against the windows. And in the room such silence settled that it seemed even the city was waiting for my answer.

“Tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” he said.

“It’s my resignation.”

“I didn’t ask a question, Maya.”

“I know.”

His gaze hardened. I had worked beside him for seven years and knew what that look meant: someone’s door would soon close, someone’s account would be frozen, and some influential person would remember their mistake the next day.

But this time that person was me.

“Who offered you more?” he asked.

“No one.”

“A competitor?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll double your salary.”

Something inside me broke. Not with a sound. Only in the way I looked at him for the first time as a woman looks at a man, and not as a secretary looks at an employer.

“You still think every answer is money.”

Vincent stopped.

A small gold button on the sleeve of his dark suit had come slightly undone. It was strange that I noticed precisely such an insignificant detail at that moment. Probably because for seven years I had noticed everything: how much sugar he drank, which call irritated him, on which nights he came to the office with sleepless eyes.

“Employees don’t leave without a reason,” he said.

“I have a reason.”

I put my access card on the desk. Beside it lay a dark burgundy pen with a broken silver clip. His father had given him that pen, and Vincent used it only to sign the most important documents. Years ago I had accidentally dropped it, and the clip broke immediately. Since then he still had not replaced it.

“Is all this because of yesterday’s assignment?” His voice grew hoarse.

“Yes.”

Twenty-four hours earlier, in the same calm voice, he had told me that I had to find him a suitable wife, in the same voice with which he asked me to book a flight or arrange an emergency meeting.

“I need candidates,” he had said then.

I looked at him.

“For what?”

“For marriage.”

At that moment I thought I had not understood correctly.

Three weeks earlier, in his family home on Sixty-Fourth Street, his mother Eleanor had dropped a spoon onto her plate at dinner.

“You are thirty-eight, Vincent. You have companies, foundations, houses, hundreds of employees. But you have no family.”

“I have a family.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

Investors needed stability. Relatives needed an heir. And Eleanor needed a grandchild.

Vincent turned an emotional problem into business and assigned it to me.

There were photographs of three women in the folder. Rich families, good education, proper connections, impeccable reputations. Everything I supposedly was not.

“You know my schedule, my tastes, my family, and the people I trust,” he told me. “Who else would I ask?”

It was supposed to sound like a compliment.

But all I heard was that the man I had loved for seven years was asking me to choose another woman for him.

“Yesterday you asked me what kind of woman you need,” I said now.

“And did you find the answer?”

I did not take my eyes off him.

“A woman who will stand beside you and not disappear.”

Vincent came around the desk. For the first time in seven years I could not see power on his face. There was only fear.

“Maya, don’t open the door.”

My fingers reached the handle.

“Why?”

He picked up the burgundy pen, as though he could stop me with a signature, but at that moment someone knocked on the door three times. Then a woman’s voice came from outside:

“Mr. Moretti, the lawyer has arrived. She says this folder must be opened immediately…”

The door opened and a tall, pale woman entered the room. She held a thin leather folder, and black gloves were still on her fingers.

“Attorney Helen Ward,” she said. “These documents are to be opened only in the presence of Maya Beridze.”

Vincent fixed his eyes on me.

“Who gave such an instruction?”

“The person authorized by your father’s trust.”

The air in the room grew heavy. I looked at the folder, and my heart began beating as though my seven-year secret were breathing inside it.

“My father died seven years ago,” Vincent said.

“I know. That is precisely why he summoned you now.”

“I will open nothing until you tell me what is in there.”

Helen answered calmly:

“If you knew, you would no longer need to open it.”

Irritation flashed across Vincent’s face. He stepped toward me.

“You knew about this folder?”

“No.”

It was the truth. But I knew that my secrets could no longer remain locked away for long.

Helen placed a small voice recorder on the desk.

“You must listen to this first. Then we will open the documents.”

Vincent reached out his hand, but I stepped in front of him.

“Listen,” I said. “If you still want to stop me, first learn what your family is running from.”

Helen pressed the button. An old, hoarse man’s voice sounded in the room.

At the very first phrase Vincent let the burgundy pen slip from his hand…

His father’s voice sounded in the recording, slow and tired, as though every word were a confession prepared in advance of death.

“If this recording is being played, Eleanor has already begun arranging Vincent’s marriage. She does not know that seven years ago my son became a father for the first time.”

Vincent froze.

I leaned against the wall. My fingers went cold, and I saw only the crack in the burgundy pen on the floor.

“What is he saying?” he asked in a whisper.

The recording did not delay its continuation.

“The child’s mother is Maya Beridze. I met her in the small café of the clinic. She told me she would not inform Vincent, because that night Vincent had told her: ‘There is no place for a family in my life, and there never will be.’ I asked her not to hide the truth. She answered that if she brought the child into Vincent’s world, my son would lose her too.”

Vincent suddenly fixed his gaze on me.

“No.”

“Vincent…” Helen began.

“No! This is impossible.”

I lowered my eyes. I had waited seven years for these words, and still I had thought hearing them would be easier.

“Your daughter is alive,” I said. “Her name is Lika. She is seven years old. Today she left school early because all day she kept asking me why I was crying.”

Vincent grabbed the chair.

“You knew I was her father?”

“I knew.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“That night you yourself told me that I could remain beside you only if there were nothing between us. I understood it differently. Then fear became stronger than the truth.”

Helen took a birth certificate from the folder, and then the result of a genetic examination.

“Mr. Moretti, this is the laboratory conclusion. The samples were compared from your father’s old medical materials and from the child’s sample. Lika is Vincent Moretti’s granddaughter. And you are her father.”

Vincent looked at the paper. All color had left his face.

“Why did my father do this?”

“Because he knew your family would turn the child into a tool of inheritance,” Helen said. “That is why he created a separate trust fund. Lika was protected until she became an adult.”

“And now?”

Helen looked at her phone. For the first time genuine concern appeared on her face.

“Now someone has stolen the fund records. Also, this morning Lika’s school address was requested in the name of one of your family’s companies.”

Vincent looked toward me.

“Where is she?”

“She went from school to my neighbor.”

At that moment my phone rang. Lika’s school number was on the screen. I answered the call immediately.

“Mrs. Beridze, the child did not come here,” the principal said. “But the security camera shows that a black car was standing at the school gate.”

Vincent snatched the phone from me.

“The license plate?” he shouted.

The principal was silent for several seconds.

“The plate is registered in the name of the Moretti Foundation.”

Vincent slowly looked at me. For the first time that day, only himself was not visible in his fear.

“Maya, I did not send this car.”

Helen placed another sheet of paper on the desk.

“I know. Because the car was transferred into your name yesterday. And the signature is your own…”