My billionaire ex-husband divorced me after convincing himself I was the reason we couldn't have children.

The storm broke late that night.

Lightning fractured the Chicago skyline, followed closely by deep, rattling rolls of thunder that shook the windowpanes of the brownstone.

I was sitting at my kitchen desk, staring blankly at Eleanor’s proposed legal counter-strategy, when a sharp, frantic knocking echoed from my front door.

Not the polite tap of a courier. A heavy, desperate pounding.

I froze. Who would be knocking at midnight in the middle of a violent thunderstorm?

The knocking came again, louder this time.

“Nia! Please! I know you’re awake!” Luca’s voice filtered through the wood, muffled by the rain.

I threw down my pen, marched to the front door, and yanked it open, ready to unleash every ounce of fury I had accumulated over six years.

“Are you out of your mind? It’s past midnight! My children are sleeping—!”

The words died in my throat.

Luca was standing on my porch, completely soaked to the bone. His expensive charcoal suit was ruined, plastered against his frame; his dark hair was matted across his forehead; and water was dripping from his jawline. But it wasn't his disheveled appearance that stopped me.

It was the look in his eyes. It was the look of a man who had finally hit rock bottom and had nothing left to hide behind.

He fell to his knees right there on my doormat, sinking into a puddle of rainwater.

“Luca, what are you doing? Get up!” I hissed, glancing nervously toward the upstairs hallway where the twins were sleeping.

“No,” he choked out, bowing his head until his forehead nearly touched the wooden floorboards of my porch. “I’ll stay here until you freeze me out, just like I froze you out six years ago.”

The sheer desperation in his voice made my breath catch.

“I was terrified, Nia,” he whispered, his shoulders shaking as the rain poured over him. “When the doctors told us we couldn't have children, I felt like my entire identity as a man was collapsing. My father built his legacy on bloodlines and heirs. When Julian Vance whispered that maybe the problem was you, my ego jumped on it like a lifeline. It was easier to blame you than to accept that nature had dealt us a losing hand.”

He looked up at me, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the rainwater.

“I didn't just walk away from a marriage, Nia. I walked away from my soul. Every penthouse, every skyscraper, every billion-dollar acquisition—it was all just insulation against the cold emptiness you left behind. Evelyn left me the moment she saw those kids in the restaurant. She knew she was just a placeholder for the ghost of you. I have nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Except them. And you.”

The thunder rolled overhead, lighting up the dark street in a blinding flash of white.

I stood in the doorway, my arms crossed tightly over my chest, shivering not from the cold air, but from the terrifying realization that the man kneeling at my feet was entirely, irreversibly broken.