The Five Years He Missed Chapter 10

The Five Years He Missed Chapter 10

## Dominic’s POV

I shrugged off my overcoat and handed it to the butler, pushed open the study door, then closed it behind me with a soft click.

The room still carried the scent of cigars and leather. I sank into the wide leather chair and pressed my knuckles hard against my brow. What the hell was wrong with me—how could I be this unsettled?

I thought back to that day when I’d learned Luca wasn’t my own flesh and blood. That fury had nearly burned me to ashes. At the time, I’d even thought—let him and his damned disease go to hell together. But I’d raised him for four years, after all. That child had sobbed his heart out, clinging to my leg and refusing to let go. In the end, suppressing the nausea crawling up from my gut, I’d mobilized every connection I had and thrown out a fortune just to shut that donor up and make him cooperate.

For five years, I forced myself not to see them—mother and son. But the people around me were far too considerate. Someone always found a way to slip Elena’s updates onto my desk. Word was, she was doing well. So that pitiful act she put on in the flower shop today—she had to be lying to me!

I sat in the dark for a long time, until the ashtray was heaped with cigarette butts, before I finally grabbed the phone and called my advisor. “Whatever it takes—bring Luca before me.”

“Dominic!” The door was slammed open, and Brianna’s shrill voice pierced my eardrums. She stormed in, her face alight with undisguised fury. “Why are you going to see that bastard? You still haven’t gotten over that Elena, have you? That slut you went to see today—it was her, wasn’t it?”

Her voice climbed higher and higher, edged with a sob. “She betrayed you like that—had a child with someone else—how can you still—”

“Enough.” I cut her off coldly, my voice like ice. “Luca is not a bastard. He’s my biological son.”

The words detonated like a bomb across Brianna’s face. In an instant, every drop of color drained from her. Tears trembled on the verge of spilling from her eyes, and she blurted out, “How could you know—”

The air froze solid. I wasn’t a fool. I fixed my gaze on her darting, evasive eyes and asked, one word at a time, “What do you mean? You knew all along? That DNA report—it wasn’t just my mother pulling strings. You were involved too?”

Brianna stumbled backward in fright, her lips quivering. “No… how could that be…” Her mouth kept denying it, but that ashen face, those fingers that couldn’t stop trembling—they all told me the answer.

Before, I could pretend I didn’t see. But now, I could no longer deceive myself. “It really was you?” I could barely hear my own voice.

The moment I learned Luca was my biological son, it wasn’t that I hadn’t suspected. But Brianna had been spoiled by her family since childhood, with a naive temperament—I’d assumed at most she’d been used by my mother. Mother had already passed away, and I couldn’t resent the dead. So for these five years, I’d poured all my hatred onto Elena. I hated her for not insisting on explaining. Hated her for not coming to find me. Hated her for staying silent for five whole years. That was why I’d said so many cruel things to her in the flower shop.

But now, Brianna stood right in front of me, and the guilty expression on her face told me she’d been in this game all along. I shot to my feet, rounded the desk, and advanced on her. “Those photos of her cheating—were those also forged by you two?!”

I towered over her, my shadow swallowing her whole. Brianna’s mind had clearly gone completely blank; all she could do was shake her head uselessly. “How could… I, how could I…”

Looking at her like this, I understood everything. A panic unlike anything I’d ever felt seized hold of me. I’d clawed my way up through the family since childhood, long since honing a composure that could face a collapsing mountain without flinching. But now, I had to brace my hand against the edge of the desk just to steady myself. I didn’t dare think about it. If Elena had been framed from start to finish… then what were all the words I’d said to her, all the things I’d done to her, over these five years? What was this hatred I’d spent five years building? What was any of it?