A week later, Trent’s mother summoned him like she was calling a contractor to fix a leak.
“Saturday, two o’clock,” Catherine said. “Beacon Hill. Don’t be late.”
He walked into the mansion he’d grown up in and felt like he’d entered a museum exhibit titled How to Inherit Loneliness.
Richard sat in the study, cold eyes steady. Preston stood by the window, smug as a man who’d never been surprised by his own mistakes.
Catherine didn’t waste time.
“People are talking.”
“They always do,” Trent said, voice flat.
Richard leaned forward. “Are those children yours?”
Trent’s stomach twisted. “Yes.”
Preston laughed, sharp and mean. “Of course they are.”
Catherine’s face tightened. “This is a disaster.”
Trent’s hands shook. “I didn’t know.”
“Now you fix it,” Richard said.
“How?” Trent demanded.
Preston’s eyes gleamed like he’d been waiting for this part. “You pay her.”
Trent blinked. “What?”
“Money,” Preston said slowly, like Trent was the slow one. “Give her enough to disappear. Move away. Take the kids to California, Texas, anywhere not Boston.”
Catherine nodded. “It’s practical. It’s clean.”
Trent felt nauseous. “Those are my children.”
“You already have children,” Catherine snapped. “The acceptable ones.”
That word, acceptable, hit Trent like a slap from the past. He saw Simone’s face at that dinner. Heard the way Catherine had said spirited like it was a warning label.
Trent stood. His voice was calm, but it had something new in it, something sharp.
“No.”
Richard’s jaw tightened. “Trent.”
“No,” Trent repeated, louder. “I am not paying my children to vanish because you’re embarrassed.”
Catherine’s pearls gleamed as she stepped closer. “If you don’t fix this, we will cut you off.”
Trent laughed once, humorless. “You think that’s a threat? It was a chain.”
Preston scoffed. “You’ll come crawling back.”
Trent looked at them all, and something in him finally snapped clean.
“I’m selling my shares,” he said. “I’m done taking your money, and I’m done letting you rent space in my spine.”
Richard’s face went red. “You’re being dramatic.”
“No,” Trent said softly. “I’m being honest. For the first time.”
Catherine’s voice turned icy. “If you walk out that door, you’re no longer part of this family.”
Trent paused at the threshold, hand on the door, and looked back at the wealth, the paintings, the legacy that had never loved him the way it claimed.
“I was never part of it,” he said. “I was just controlled by it.”
Then he left.
Outside, the cold air hit him like reality.
And for the first time in years, it didn’t feel like punishment.
It felt like oxygen.
5. The Gala and the Microphone
Two months later, the Riverside Academy Fall Gala arrived like an elegant storm.
The Boston Harbor Hotel glittered. Chandeliers. White tablecloths. Silent judgments wrapped in expensive perfume.
Trent sat alone near the back, no longer buffered by family prestige. Lauren sat across the room with her parents, posture straight, face tired. Catherine and Richard sat near the front like royalty pretending their prince had died.
Then Simone entered.
She wore gold, and it wasn’t subtle. She moved through the room with the calm of a woman who’d survived things these people couldn’t imagine surviving. Board members flocked to her like compliments were currency.
Trent watched her and felt something dangerous: admiration.
He also felt grief.
Because she had become this without him. In spite of him.
When the kindergarten class performed, the five children walked onto the stage holding hands like it was the most natural arrangement in the world.
Jordan, Elijah, Zara, Marcus, Maya.
Five identical little faces in a line, singing a song about family with voices small but bright. Their hands stayed linked the whole time, as if their bodies remembered something their minds didn’t.
The room’s applause was… strange. It carried whispers inside it.
People leaned close, eyes narrowed. A hundred quiet calculations.
Trent felt that old panic rising. That urge to hide. To smooth over. To pretend.
And then he remembered what Simone had said once, years ago:
Honest is just what happens when you stop performing.
Trent stood.
He didn’t plan it. He just stood, like his body was tired of lying.
He walked to the stage, took the microphone, and the ballroom turned into a held breath.
“My name is Trent Collins,” he said, voice trembling. “And those children… Jordan, Elijah, and Zara… they’re mine.”
Gasps. Whispers like wind through curtains.
Catherine half-stood, face white. Richard grabbed her arm.
Trent kept going, because stopping would be another form of cowardice.
He told them about Simone. About love. About pressure. About fear. About leaving. About not knowing.
Lauren’s tears fell openly now. Not because she wanted him back, but because the truth finally had a voice.
When Trent said, “I was a coward,” the word hung in the air like a confession and an indictment.
Then he looked toward Simone, hands shaking around the microphone.
“I want to be their father,” he said. “If you’ll let me.”
The silence that followed wasn’t polite.
It was absolute.
Simone stood.
Every head turned as she walked toward the stage in her gold dress, not rushing, not hesitating. The room felt suddenly smaller, like it had to shrink to contain her.
She took the microphone from Trent without touching him.
And she faced them all.
“Trent is right,” she said calmly. “He was a coward.”
The word landed, clean and sharp. Someone near the front exhaled too loud.
Simone told them what it had been like: the basement apartment, the three jobs, the fear, the triplets born at Boston City Hospital, the way survival became her religion.
“I didn’t have family money,” she said. “I didn’t have doors opened for me. I built my own doors.”
The crowd shifted. People who’d never had to build doors looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t need Trent’s apology to be whole,” Simone continued. “I already won. I survived. I succeeded. I raised three beautiful children.”
Then her gaze moved to Trent for the first time. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t cruel.
It was clear.
“But our children deserve to know their father,” she said. “Not for his sake. For theirs.”
She turned back to the room.
“If he wants that role,” Simone said, voice steady, “he will have to earn it. Actions. Not promises.”
Then she handed the microphone back and walked off the stage like she was leaving a courtroom after delivering the verdict.
Lauren stood and began clapping.
Not for Trent.
For Simone.
And one by one, the room stood and joined her, applause rising like a wave that finally understood what strength looked like.
Preston didn’t stand. He stormed out.
Catherine and Richard left too, faces tight with humiliation.
Trent went to the men’s room afterward and cried in a stall like a man mourning the person he used to be.
6. First Meetings, Small Truths
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