The silence seemed to stretch and tense, like a wire drawn just before it snaps. Aria could feel Xavier's analytical mind sifting through her micro-expressions, her controlled responses, the little quiver in her right hand as she placed her glass of whiskey down.
"There's one more thing," Xavier said quietly, his voice now weighted with importance. "And it's something I didn't publish in that file."
Aria's chest felt tight. "Oh?"
Xavier reached back into the front of his jacket and extracted a single piece of paper, a photograph. He placed it face down in between them. It's as if he were reluctant to allow the photograph to be viewed and his fingers were lingering on the edge of the photograph.
"Three months ago," Xavier began, meeting her gaze. "I had just left a client meeting near the Marina Bay district. I saw a woman with a child walking toward the Marina Bay Residences. The woman looked familiar but I couldn't place her right away."
Aria felt the blood begin to drain from her face. Marina Bay Residences. Her building. The building she'd lived in with Luna for almost two years now since she'd upgraded from the temporary corporate housing.
"The kid was maybe four-years-old," Xavier said, his tone deadened but exceptionally serious. "Dark hair, nicely dressed, holding the woman's hand quite properly. What I noticed most was the poise of the kid—confident, observant, with a way of tilting her head when thinking."
No. No, not like this.
"But what stood out to me more than any of that," Xavier said, slowly turning the photo around, "were the kid's eyes."
The photo was both distant in perspective, and had been taken with the use of a long lens, as Aria and Luna were inching toward their building. It was unmistakable that they were Luna's steel-grey eyes that were actually clear in profile.
Aria just gazed into the photo while watching her carefully constructed world collapse in real time. Luna looked so small in the photograph! She looked so innocent! No knowledge of the resurfacing resemblance to her father that had just undone five years of concealment.
"At first, I thought it was a coincidence," Xavier continued, his voice low but unstoppable. "Kid's eyes change color as they get older. But those eyes... They are exact copies of mine. Genetically exact copies."
Aria couldn't sound a note. She couldn't even take a breath.
Couldn't breathe. To formulate a single coherent thought, other than the instinctual imperative to protect her child.
"Then I started thinking about timelines," Xavier began, falling into the analytical mode he used in formal presentations. "Our encounter was five years and three months ago. The child looks to be approximately four years old. The math checks out..."
"Xavier—" Aria found her voice finally, but he raised a hand to stop her.
"I hired a private investigator," he started. "Discreet inquiries about the woman in the photograph. After two weeks, I got my confirmation regarding what I suspected: Aria Chen; not married; daughter, Luna Chen, four years and, if I remember correctly, seven months old."
The room felt like it was spinning. Every one of her carefully planned moves, her carefully planned moves to relocate, her carefully constructed life, constructed to keep Luna hidden; everything erased in a moment's chance sighting and Xavier's systematic mind.
"Four years and seven months," Xavier confirmed, almost angrily. "Born approximately nine months after our night together."
For a moment, Aria closed her eyes before reopening them to meet his steady gaze. There was no longer a point in deflecting, and there was no clever strategy that could ever put this particular genie back in the bottle.
"Yes," she said flatly.
The sheer magnitude of her confirmation hit Xavier like a physical blow. All his calculations, all his statistical reasoning, but hearing the word 'yes' almost knocked the wind out of him.
"She's mine," he spoke, but it was only a half-hearted question.
"She's mine," she corrected. "I've raised her alone for five years. You're her biological father, but you are not her parent."
Xavier looked at that picture again, his jaw working over the full implications. "You deprived me of my daughter for five years."
"I'm protecting my daughter from complications that she doesn't need," Aria replied, her voice loudening now as she drew strength from her maternal instincts and pushed aside her shock. "You were clear that night, merely a one-off. And when I found out that I was pregnant, I made the decision that I thought was best for my child."
"That was not your decision to make alone at that time," he replied calmly and quietly.
"It was all my decision," Aria retorted. "You were a stranger who said in no uncertain terms that you wanted nothing to do with me. I had no way of knowing whether you would want to take on the mantle of fatherhood."
Xavier's composure finally broke. "You had no right to make that choice for me!"
His voice was loud enough for Aria to glance towards the door of the private dining room, praying that the soundproofing would do its job. The last thing she wanted was for Xavier to make a scene.
"I had every right," Aria said, matching his volume. "I was the one who would be pregnant, give birth to a baby and raise a child. You were a one-night stand who clearly wanted nothing to do with it."
"A one-night stand who deserves to know that he has a daughter!"
The silence that followed was thick with all the untamed emotion that had stripped them naked of the professional faces they put on for one another. For the first time since Aria had met him, she could see true vulnerability from the man in front of her--not the strong corporate predator she had always seen until now, but a human being confronted with the news that he had been a father for five years and had not even known.
"What is her name?" he asked quietly.
"Luna." Aria's voice trailed a little. "Luna Chen."
"Luna," Xavier said again, rolling the name off of his tongue. "Is she ... is she healthy? Happy?"
As always, Aria felt a glint of the protective pride that came along with talking about her daughter. "She's brilliant. Inquisitive, tenacious, emotionally intelligent. She asks unanswerable questions and counter-arguments that would bedazzle a philosophy professor."
Xavier's expression changed as he took in this news. "So, she sounds like you."
"She's both of us," Aria confessed. "The way you have the striking eyes she absolutely got from you, the intensity, the quizzical way of tilting her head while thinking. but also ... she's so much warmer than either of us. More open. She makes friends so easily. She trusts people so easily."
"I have to meet her."
Aria felt like she had sustained a wound from the words. "No."
"She's my daughter—"
"She's my daughter," Aria interrupted fiercely. "She doesn't even know you exist. She has lived a life without you. I will not let this be interrupted because you feel it is your turn to play father."
Xavier's face flared up with anger. "Play father? You think this is a game?"
"I think this is an initial shock that you're responding to quickly rather than thoughtfully," Aria said, although her tone had less conviction than her words. "Luna has stability, security, a routine that is working for her. I will not allow that to be destroyed by someone who has a 50/50 chance of being bored with it once they realize they aren't an expert."
"You don't know anything about what I might be capable of doing," Xavier said, his tone tight with reigned in fury, but still controlled. "You made decisions five years ago, based upon one conversation, and have since made every decision for both of us."
Aria accepted the truth in what he was saying, but maternal instinct to protect her daughter, regardless of the rational acceptance, was stronger. "I made decisions based upon what I knew about you five years ago, and what I have seen from you since then. You are brilliant, driven, and obsessively focused on professional success. Children need emotional availability, patience, and the capacity to put someone else's needs above personal desires."
"And you don't believe I'm capable of that?"
"I don't believe you have the capacity for that," Aria answered honestly, "and I am not willing to test the waters with her emotional security."
Xavier looked at her for a long time and was able to express anger, frustration, and possible pain, before he finally asked, "So now what?"
"Now it doesn't change anything," Aria said feebly, knowing that she was lying to him. "You have what you wanted. I made it clear, we confirmed your suspicions. But Luna's life will continue exactly the same."
"That is unacceptable."
"That's not your decision."
"She is my daughter too!"
"She is a child who doesn't know you even exist," Aria said. "Where your role would begin in her life would require some explanation that would fundamentally change her understanding of family, of herself, and of her safety."
For a moment Xavier was silent, keeping the expression of his business-trained mind behind the masked façade and mental gymnastics of consideration of the whole situation. "She asks about her father."
It was not a question. Aria now understood; he had done more intelligence and surveillance work than was needed just to find Luna.
"Sometimes," she said reluctantly.
"What do you tell her?"
"That her father is not part of the family."
"That's not an answer, that's avoidance."
Now Aria could feel herself nearly collapsing under the weight of exhaustion settling over her.
This talk was dismantling years of careful build and making her examine decisions that had been made in solitude and held firm with strong will and not conviction.
"I tell her that her father is a good man who lives far away and does't even know about her," she said quietly. "I tell her that if he did know she existed, he would love her."
Xavier's expression softened a little bit. "Do you believe that?"
Aria held his gaze squarely. "Yes. I believe you would love her. This is precisely why it is so complicated."
Neither spoke as the heaviness of five years of secrets and decisions settled between them. The whiskey glasses were forgotten, the elegantly appointed private dining room feeling suddenly too small for what had just been revealed.
"I need time to digest this," Xavier finally said.
"And I need time to figure out how to shield Luna from the implosions:" Aria replied.
"This doesn't stop where it is, Aria. I can't unlearn that she exists."
"And I can't ignore that your sudden desire to be a father will wreck everything I've built for her."
Xavier stood slowly, his movements deliberate and controlled. "I'm not going anywhere. Luna is my daughter, and I will be part of her life.
"On my terms," said Aria, standing as well. "If this goes forward at all, it will do so slowly, cautiously, with the primary consideration being Luna's emotional well being."
"Agreed." Xavier said, but his acknowledgment sounded as though it was fraught with even deeper reservations. "But it is going to happen, Aria. One way or the other."
Xavier completed his collection of his jacket and the picture that would send him up the wall and paused in the doorway, "She has my eyes, but she has your smile. Even in the picture, taken from a distance and lighting that sucks, I can still see you smile in her face."
The observation, delivered unexpectedly soft and gentle, knocked the wind out of Aria, much harder than his earlier anger had. For a moment she saw his gentle way he might have been a father all along, if only things had been different.
"Xavier, " she called as he opened the door. "Luna is not unhappy. Whatever happens next, please remember that."
He nodded once and left the hotel hallway, and with it took with him more of the structural support that formed her carefully constructed life, and modified life, a part of her was terrified it would all change.