Chapter 10
An hour later, my phone vibrated. It was a message from Victoria.
He gave me the independence Dad stole from me fifteen years ago, the text read. He gave Marco enough legal headaches to keep him tied up in grand juries for the next two decades. He took the blame for everything in the press to protect my reputation. Go back to Switzerland, El. Raise your son in the sun. But know that for the first time in his life, Dante Moretti isn't running from his name. He just buried it.
That afternoon, before our flight to O'Hare, a courier arrived at my hotel suite. He handed me a single cream envelope.
Inside was no legal contract, no manipulative demand, and no grand declaration of love.
There was a plane ticket to Zurich dated six months in the future. Along with it was a notarized parental custody proposal that gave me one hundred percent legal custody, designating Zurich as Leo’s permanent primary residence. Dante had signed away every single legal lever a billionaire father could have used to trap a child in the United States.
Attached was a handwritten note:
You owe me nothing. Leo owes me nothing. I gave up the empire because it was the poison that kept me from being the man you deserved. I am spending the next six months closing every remaining tie to this city and submitting to an independent international audit. In six months, I am coming to Zurich. Not to force myself into your house, but to rent an apartment three streets away, learn German, and walk our son to preschool if you'll let me. You have the steering wheel now, Elena. You always should have had it.
I held the note against my chest as we boarded the plane back to Europe. As the Chicago skyline shrank beneath the wings of the aircraft, disappearing into the clouds, the heavy, suffocating knot that had lived in my sternum for three years finally dissolved into nothingness.
The nightmare was over. The truth was out. And the future was entirely in my hands.
PART 9: Zurich in Autumn
Six months later, the golden leaves of October drifted down along the cobblestone paths of the Lindenhof in Zurich. Lake Zurich sparkled under a crisp, pale blue sky, with the snow-capped Alps standing like ancient guardians in the far distance.
Zurich had become our paradise. I had opened a small, sunlit art restoration studio near the Niederdorf district, where I spent my mornings bringing centuries-old oil paintings back to life. Leo had grown three inches, his cheeks rosy from the crisp alpine air, chattering happily in a mixture of English and Swiss German.