Chapter 109
A month changed many things in the lives of the Morettis—and at the same time, almost nothing.
Gabriela moved back into the family mansion three days after Alejandro was transferred to a recovery room. It wasn’t really a decision so much as the natural consequence of having nowhere else to go. Her clothes were still in the Hamptons house, and no one was setting foot in that place to retrieve them, so Aurora filled her closet with new clothes, and Gael personally made sure his daughter’s room had everything she might need—from new sheets to a television she hadn’t asked for and an alarm system connected directly to his phone that she considered excessive but didn’t argue about, because arguing with her father while he was in guilt mode was like arguing with a wall that also cried.
Gael Moretti had become unrecognizable.
The man who had ruled his family with an iron fist for three decades now wouldn’t let Gabriela go out alone even to buy coffee. If she went down to the garden, he appeared ten minutes later pretending he needed fresh air. If she mentioned going to the supermarket, he insisted on going with her, or sending the driver, or ordering the groceries online because the streets of Manhattan were dangerous for a woman alone—an argument Aurora dismantled with a look that said shut up, Gael, but which he ignored with the stubbornness of a man trying to compensate for years of negligence with weeks of overprotection.
Gabriela tolerated it because she understood what was behind it.
Her father was broken inside, eaten alive by guilt for having handed her over to Dante, and this suffocating version of paternal love was the only way he knew how to apologize without actually saying the words. It wasn’t enough. It didn’t erase anything. But it was something.
And after months living with a man who beat her, having another one who wouldn’t let her go out alone because he was afraid something might happen to her was a problem she could manage.
What she couldn’t manage so easily were the visits to Alejandro.
She went to the hospital every day for the first two weeks and then to his apartment after he was discharged. She arrived punctually at ten in the morning with some excuse that varied between bringing homemade food Aurora had prepared, delivering books nobody had asked for, or simply making sure he was following the doctor’s instructions.
Transparent excuses that fooled exactly no one—but Gabriela maintained them with admirable discipline, because admitting the truth out loud was still territory she didn’t dare step into.
The problem was Ana.
Alejandro’s mother wouldn’t leave his side for anything. From the moment she arrived at the hospital she installed herself in her son’s life with the force of a domestic hurricane—cooking, cleaning, organizing his medications into little labeled jars by the hour, and monopolizing every conversation with an energy that left Alejandro exhausted and Gabriela without room to breathe.
Every time Gabriela arrived at the apartment, Ana welcomed her with an enthusiastic hug, sat her in the kitchen, and launched into hours of conversation about recipes, soap operas, the weather, and the neighbors in the building, while Alejandro watched them from the couch with absolute despair on his face.
“Gabriela, dear, have you tried my coconut flan yet? I made it this morning especially for you.”
“Mrs. Ana, I came to see how Alejandro was and—”
“He’s fine, look at him lying there watching television like he doesn’t have a mother taking care of him. Come sit here with me and I’ll tell you what happened to the neighbor on the third floor—you won’t believe this.”
Alejandro raised his hands behind his mother making silent gestures for help that Gabriela understood perfectly but couldn’t solve, because Ana Ferrer was a force of nature who accepted no competition when it came to caring for her son.
And every time Gabriela tried to get close to Alejandro to speak privately, Ana appeared with another flan, another coffee, or another endless story that made it clear—without saying it—that as long as she was there, her son was under her jurisdiction.
Alejandro was frustrated, but he was also patient.
He knew his mother would eventually leave because she had her own life and commitments, and when that happened he would have all the time in the world to talk to Gabriela about what they both knew but neither dared confirm.
He could wait.
He had waited thirteen years.
A few more weeks weren’t going to kill him—although his mother and her coconut flans were making a decent attempt.
Meanwhile Gabriel was fighting his own silent war.
Victoria hadn’t mentioned the conditions again since that night in the study, but she didn’t need to. Her presence in the mansion was a constant reminder—every shared breakfast an unspoken negotiation, every glance a calculation.
Gabriel had accepted the first two conditions with the resignation of a man signing a surrender contract: he would sleep in the same bed, and he would hand over half his shares.
But the third haunted him day and night like a splinter buried somewhere he couldn’t reach.
Having sex with Victoria whenever she wanted.
The idea turned his stomach in a way that went beyond physical rejection. It was the memory of that night at the gala—the whiskey that tasted different, his body responding without his consent, waking with the certainty he had been violated by the same woman who was now demanding he repeat the experience as the price of his freedom.
He asked for a few days to think about it, and Victoria agreed with the patience of a predator who knows its prey has nowhere to run.
Gabriel used those days to invent a trip to London under the pretext of visiting Alejandra, who was on bed rest with a complicated pregnancy. Mateo had called worried, asking if someone from the family could come see her, and Gabriel volunteered with an enthusiasm no one questioned, because needing space after weeks of hell was perfectly understandable.
London gave him five days of air.
Five days away from Victoria and her conditions. Away from the mansion that felt like a different prison but a prison all the same.
Alejandra was enormous and radiant despite the mandatory rest, and Mateo cared for her with a devotion that provoked in Gabriel an envy so deep it hurt physically.
Seeing them together—happy, building a real life based on real love—was like looking through a window into the life he might have had if he had been braver.
He told Alejandra about Victoria. About the pregnancy. About the conditions.
His sister listened without interrupting, and when he finished she looked at him with those green eyes identical to their mother’s and said something that burned into his chest like hot iron.
“No child deserves to be the chain that ties their father to a miserable life. If Victoria really is pregnant, find a way to be a father without being her prisoner. And if she isn’t pregnant and she’s lying, find out before it’s too late.”
Gabriel returned to New York without an answer—but with a seed of doubt that began to grow silently.
Six hundred kilometers from Manhattan, in a small but clean apartment on the outskirts of Boston, Lucía Sandoval was living a completely different reality.
Eight months of pregnancy had transformed her body in ways that still surprised her every morning in front of the mirror. The enormous belly. Swollen ankles. A back that protested every time she tried to stand up from the couch.
She had stopped working three weeks earlier because the hospital where she found a job after fleeing New York had given her early maternity leave when they saw she could barely stay on her feet through an entire shift.
Rosa, her mother, had traveled from Queens to stay with her during the last weeks of the pregnancy. Diego and Sofía stayed with an aunt so they could finish the school year.
Lucía’s life had been reduced to four walls, obstetric appointments, meals her mother cooked with the firm belief that a good stew cured everything, and endless afternoons of television where she avoided the news like poison.
But that Thursday afternoon she wasn’t fast enough with the remote.
She was looking for a movie when the screen flashed the logo of an entertainment program, and before she could change the channel the image hit her like a punch.
Victoria Harrington de Moretti—radiant in a blue dress that revealed a barely noticeable belly—posing next to Gabriel on the steps of the Moretti mansion while publicly announcing her pregnancy.
Eight weeks.
A Moretti–Harrington heir on the way.
The family merger celebrated with champagne and smiles for the cameras.
Gabriel was smiling in the photo—but Lucía knew that smile. She had seen it a thousand times when he pretended in front of his parents, in front of business partners, in front of the entire world.
A smile that never reached his eyes.
A smile made of façade and obligation.
But it didn’t matter.
Next to him was Victoria with her possessive hand on his arm and the other caressing her belly with a rehearsed tenderness the cameras devoured.
The news repeated on every channel with variations of the same headline.
The great Moretti family grows.
The heir that unites two empires.
Gabriel and Victoria expect their first child.
Lucía didn’t know when she started crying or when the crying turned into something else.
A sharp pain tore through her belly like lightning, and suddenly the couch was wet beneath her and her mother came running from the kitchen shouting her name.
The labor was long and difficult.
Eighteen hours in a Boston hospital where no one knew the name Moretti and no one cared.
Rosa held her hand the entire time, wiping her sweat, telling her to push, to breathe, that it was almost over.
And Lucía pushed with a strength she didn’t know she had—crying from pain, from rage, from sadness, and from something fierce that had no name but kept her alive when her body wanted to give up.
At three forty-seven in the morning on Friday, in a delivery room without champagne or photographers or important last names, a baby boy was born.
Small. Wrinkled. Furious with the world like all newborns.
With tiny fists clenched and a cry that filled the room with such force that the nurses smiled.
When they placed him on her chest, Lucía stopped crying.
Because the baby opened his eyes—and she saw Gabriel looking back at her.
The same dark eyes.
The same shape of the jaw already hinted at even in a newborn face.
The same lips.
The same serious, focused expression as if he were evaluating the world before deciding whether it was worth staying.
He was identical to his father.
“He’s beautiful, mija,” Rosa whispered, crying beside her. “He’s perfect.”
Lucía touched her son’s tiny cheek with a trembling finger and felt something rearrange itself inside her chest.
The pain didn’t disappear. The loneliness didn’t vanish. The emptiness Gabriel had left was still there, as deep as ever.
But around that emptiness—covering it like roots wrapping around a rock—something new grew.
Something fierce and enormous that needed no surname, no fortune, no marriage contract.
Love.
Pure, unconditional, instant.
The kind of love that breaks you in half and rebuilds you at the same time.
“Matías,” Lucía said with a hoarse, exhausted voice. “His name is Matías.”
Not Moretti.
Sandoval.
Matías Sandoval.
Son of a nurse from Queens who earned just enough to live, and who had loved a man who let her go out of duty.
A boy who would grow up without knowing who his father was, because his mother had decided silence was better than war.
That night, with Matías asleep against her chest and the hospital light casting shadows on the walls, Lucía let the thoughts she had kept at bay for months finally catch up with her.
She should find Gabriel.
Matías had the right to know his father, and Gabriel had the right to know he had a son.
A real son—conceived in love, not obligation. A living proof that what they had shared wasn’t a fantasy but the most real thing either of them had ever experienced.
But the fear was bigger.
Fear of the Harringtons and their power.
Fear of lawyers who could take her son away in a legal battle she could never afford.
Fear that Gabriel would choose duty again—that he would look at her with compassion and say he was sorry, but his life was with Victoria now.
Fear of breaking again in a way that this time would have no repair—because now it wasn’t just about her, but about Matías.
So she hugged her son tighter, closed her eyes, and made the most cowardly and the bravest decision of her life at the same time.
She would remain alone.
She would raise Matías with what she had.
She would work double shifts when she recovered.
She would give him all the love two parents should give—concentrated in one person.
And one day, when Matías was older and asked about his father, she would find the words to explain that sometimes love isn’t enough when the world gets in the way.
But as she stroked those tiny fingers that wrapped around her index finger with a strength that contradicted their size, a small stubborn voice in the depths of her heart whispered something she couldn’t silence completely.
He deserves to know. Gabriel deserves to know.
Lucía squeezed her eyes shut and pushed the voice down, burying it with everything else she couldn’t afford to feel.
Tomorrow would be another day.
And Matías needed her whole.