“They have my eyes,” Sebastian Carter said in the middle of the restaurant, unable to tear his gaze away from the three children. “Hannah, tell me who their father is.”
Every conversation in the upscale Chicago restaurant came to an abrupt stop.
Sebastian stood beside his fiancée, Olivia Bennett, one hand resting confidently on her waist. The diamond engagement ring on her finger sparkled beneath the crystal chandeliers.
Five-year-old triplets Ethan, Sophie, and Lucas all looked up at the same time.
Lucas wrinkled his nose and pointed at Sebastian.
“He makes the same face I make when Mom won’t let me have another piece of cake.”
For a split second, Hannah felt the past crash back into her life.
But she refused to look away.
Without saying a word, she unlocked her phone, started recording, and slipped it into her open handbag.
She hadn’t come to The Grand Oak, one of Chicago’s most exclusive restaurants, expecting to run into her ex-husband.
She was there because the restaurant’s owner wanted to hire her company, Little Harvest Kitchen, to develop healthy meal programs for public schools and daycare centers.
Five years earlier, she had walked away from the Carter family mansion carrying nothing but one suitcase, a dangerous high-risk pregnancy, and the certainty that she would have to survive alone.
Now she paid every bill herself.
She employed fourteen people.
And she had raised three remarkable children who had never needed a billionaire’s last name to be happy.
Sebastian slowly stepped toward the table.
He still looked exactly like the business magazine covers that featured him every few months.
Confident.
Successful.
Untouchable.
Yet the moment he looked at the children, he seemed unable to breathe.
“How old are they?”
“Five.”
His fiancée visibly paled.
She knew the dates perfectly well.
The divorce had been finalized after Hannah was already pregnant.
“They’re… triplets?” Sebastian asked quietly.
“We’re three people,” Sophie answered with complete seriousness. “We’re not merchandise.”
