Alex took the envelope. The paper was worn, the edges soft from being handled countless times. He didn’t open it yet. Instead, he looked at the boys—really looked at them. He saw the way they stood, the way they held their heads, the subtle, nervous habits that were so distinctly his own. The fear of being a fraud, of being exposed, suddenly evaporated, replaced by a terrifying, overwhelming surge of protectiveness.
“Where is she?” Alex asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Noah pointed toward the glass doors of the lobby, where a woman stood in the rain, watching them from the sidewalk. She was drenched, her coat clinging to her frame, her eyes fixed on the scene inside with a mixture of agony and relief. It was Elena. The woman he had loved in his youth—the woman he had walked away from to protect her from the wreckage of his own life after the accident.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. He hadn’t been sterile; he had been lied to, or perhaps, he had simply been too broken to see the truth. He had spent years building apps to help parents connect, while he had been the one disconnected from the greatest truth of his life.
Alex stood up, the boys still clinging to his hands. He didn’t care about the board members watching from the mezzanine, or the reporters who would surely be calling by noon. He looked at the boys, then toward the woman in the rain, and for the first time in seven years, Alexander Sterling felt the ice in his chest begin to thaw. He wasn’t just a billionaire anymore; he was a father, and he was finally ready to stop pretending.
