Chapter 68 The Reunion in Milan

Chapter 68 The Reunion in Milan
Chapter 68.

The Reunion in Milan

Two years pass. Lucas has continued his facade of a life, slowly recovering the corporation's presidency, but he is broken. He has never stopped looking for Alicia, investing fortunes in private detectives.

Alicia, in Milan, has managed to keep Julián hidden and safe. Now that her son is two years old, she feels the need to honor her past. On the day commemorating her parents' death, she decides to take Julián to their grave.

Walking through the Milan cemetery, a serene place full of cypress trees, Alicia stops in front of her parents' tomb. Julián plays with a small toy car on the lawn.

While Alicia cleans the marble, a black luxury car stops at the cemetery entrance, alerted by the caretakers whom Lucas has bribed to watch the Jank headstones and inform him if she ever visited; they have finally managed to find her.

Lucas gets out of the car. He is thinner, paler, but his eyes burn with the same desperate intensity. His detectives have finally found her trail. He sees her standing next to the headstones, dressed in simple clothes, and beside her... a small child.

Lucas walks slowly, his heart pounding with painful force.

“Alicia,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper, pronouncing the name that has tormented his nights for three years.

She turns. Her eyes meet his. Surprise, joy, resentment, and love mix in Alicia's gaze. Julián, sensing Lucas's presence, raises his head. The child looks at him, unafraid, and the resemblance to Lucas is undeniable, a mirror of his own face.

Julián smiles, pointing at Lucas.

“Daddy,” the child says, his voice sweet and clear.

A voice, so deep and familiar that it pierces her soul, breaks the silence.

“It can't be…”

The voice is guttural, charged with disbelief and an emotion so raw that it hits her like a freezing wave.

Alicia snaps her head up.

There he is. Lucas.

Time seems to stop, collapsing the three years of separation into a brutal instant. Lucas stands a few feet away, on the border between her current life and her forbidden past. She sees he is thinner than she remembered, with a short beard framing his face and evident dark circles under his eyes that testify to months without rest. But his Italian tailored suit is impeccable, his posture is that of a man who dominates the world, and his eyes, those intense and stormy eyes, devour her with a mixture of shock, adoration, and pain. A Despite everything, he is as handsome as ever, with a beauty that has always been her downfall.

Lucas is not alone. Several security men, dressed in black, appear behind him, closing the perimeter with the silent efficiency of those trained not to fail. Alicia's heart races, beating with a rhythm of primary panic.

“Daddy!” exclaims Julián, suddenly.

The word is a dart that pierces the air and sticks into Alicia. Lucas, his father. She never lied to him. She showed him photos and spoke of him as the man who loved her and disappointed her, as a cherished and painful shadow of her life. The little one recognizes him instantly, with the instinctive certainty of blood.

Instinctively, Alicia grabs Julián. She lifts him and places him behind her, cradling him against her back with a fierce, protective gesture. It is the lioness mother emerging from the humble habit.

“Don't come closer…” her voice is barely a whisper broken by panic, but it carries the force of an irreversible command. She lifts her gaze to Lucas, and then to the ring of men surrounding them. The terror in her eyes is visible, palpable.

Lucas, seeing the pure fear emanating from her face, the tremor running through the body of the woman he has sought relentlessly, raises a hand and signals his men. The order is clear, silent.

“Step back. Leave her to me” his voice is grave, an indisputable order that the guards immediately obey, backing up to give them space, but without disappearing completely.

The space opens up, but the tension thickens.

Alicia looks at him, feeling exposed in her nun's habit, an armor of humility and chastity that contrasts brutally with Lucas's opulence.

“You were there all this time… in the convent” murmurs Lucas, and a bitter, self-critical smile appears on his lips. “Why didn't I think of it? The only person who could live without me is one who has renounced the world.”

She holds Julián in her arms, trying to find the quickest way to flee. Her eyes scan the cemetery, looking for an escape route, a door, a gap in the security, but she knows it is useless. She is trapped.

“Go away, please! Let me go” she begs, pleading for the freedom that cost her so much to achieve.

Julián, sensing his mother's fear, the trembling in her arms, reacts like a baby. He puts his thumb in his mouth and rests his head on Alicia's shoulder, clinging to his mother's chest as if it were the last safe refuge in the world.

Lucas takes a tentative step, and his eyes, previously fixed on Alicia, fall upon the child hiding his face. His breath catches. The child is the irrefutable proof, the living fruit of their last night together.

“He is… He is my copy” says Lucas, fascinated, his voice charged with a newfound devotion, a paternity that strikes and disarms him completely.

As he takes the next step, Alicia retreats, taking a step backward, without letting go of her son.

“Don't come closer! Why are you here? Go away, please!”

Lucas stops, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I can't, my love. I've been looking for you for months. You don't know how long I've longed for this moment, to see you again. Alicia, I love you” the confession comes out as a roar, a truth that has been screaming inside him.

The fury, contained by three years of silence and pain, explodes in Alicia.

“You deceived me! You played with me! And now you're going to tell me you love me?” her words are a whip. “You don't love me, Lucas. You love money, you love power. You played with me and with her! I'm not going back to that life. I left you behind. I forgot you. Please, let me go!”

“I can't. It's all a misunderstanding, my love. I would never betray you. You are the love of my life, Alicia. This baby is the fruit of our love” he says, moving slightly towards her, the magnetism between them a force trying to pull her in.

“Don't come closer, please” she reiterates.

In that instant of tension, Julián lifts his head. He looks at his father, the man in the photos, the man his mother describes with tears in her eyes.

“Daddy” says the little boy, reaching a hand out to him. “Mommy, Daddy…”