Chapter 10 - A Father’s Knees
The front door opened wider, and Anna stepped out onto the porch, wrapped in a heavy cashmere robe. The rain misted around her, catching the soft amber light of the foyer lamps.
Vincent looked at her, his heart breaking open completely.
“I will sign over Moretti Aerospace,” Vincent said, his voice raw. “All sixty percent of my controlling shares. No conditions. No legal battles. I will transfer all voting rights to Leo’s trust, managed entirely by you.”
Anna narrowed her eyes, watching him shiver in the downpour. “You think you can buy my forgiveness with stock certificates?”
“No,” Vincent said, falling to his knees in the mud and rain before her porch. “I know I can’t. Keep the shares. Keep the empire. Burn it down if it gives you peace. I’m giving it to Leo because it’s his birthright. I just want… I just want to sit in a room with him for five minutes. I want to tell him that his mother is the bravest human being alive, and that his father was an idiot who will spend every second of the rest of his life repenting.”
Anna looked down at him. The torrential rain beat against his shoulders, soaking through his clothes, plastering his dark hair to his forehead. For three years, she had envisioned this exact scenario: Vincent Moretti, begging in the dirt.
Yet, looking at him now—hollowed out, broken, his soul laid completely bare—she felt no triumphant joy. Only the deep, echoing ache of a love that had burned in the same fire that scarred her body.
“Get up, Vincent,” she said quietly.
Vincent looked up through the rain, his gray eyes hollow. “Anna…”
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“Get up out of the mud,” she repeated, her voice softer now, though still guarded. “Come inside before you freeze to death. Leo is asleep, but… you can see him through the door.”
A choke escaped Vincent’s chest. He rose slowly, his limbs shaking from cold and overwhelming emotion, and climbed the steps. As he passed her, their eyes met. The distance between them was still a canyon, but the bridge had begun to form from the ashes.
