Chapter 1 - The Perfect Score
13 years after our divorce, I stood in a marble hallway and watched my empire turn to ash — the twins I abandoned had already burned it down before I said a word.
The corridor behind the main stage felt like a different building entirely. Polished marble, hard fluorescent light, and none of the noise from the auditorium — just a dull, far-off roar, like waves breaking somewhere I couldn't see.
I walked like a man headed to his own sentencing. My shoes, handmade in Milan, felt like cinder blocks strapped to my feet. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a single sentence that could bridge thirteen years and the size of what I'd done. All I had was a pull in my chest I couldn't fight — some old, animal need to stand close to the blood I'd thrown away.
I turned a corner and stopped cold.
At the end of the hall, under the warm light of a waiting room, stood Claire and the boys. She was straightening the heavy gold ribbon around Gabriel's neck, her hands moving with a gentleness I hadn't seen in over a decade. Nathaniel stood beside her, turning the massive trophy over in his hands before sliding a thick folder of papers into a beat-up canvas backpack.
"Mom," Gabriel said, and his voice carried easily off the marble. Steady. Amused. "Some tech guy back there told me this thing is solid brass. It weighs like ten pounds. Here — hold it a second, see if it snaps your wrist."
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Claire laughed. It was rich and real, and it hit me somewhere I thought had gone numb years ago — that same laugh that used to fill our tiny, water-stained apartment on nights we had nothing but each other. She patted Nathaniel's shoulder without looking away from Gabriel.
"You won it. You carry it," she said. "I only hold on to what's actually mine."
