I just held my daughter tighter, calling her name, gently rubbing her little hands that had already gone cold and stiff.
“Regina,” I said quietly, “It doesn't matter if you want to believe me or not, but I never did anything to harm your baby with Hector. I didn’t even know you had one.”
I felt like the life had been drained from me. “Fact remains that you killed my daughter. I want a divorce.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line before I heard Regina scoff coldly.
“Still trying to play the victim, huh? Luciano, your performance is getting old.”
Then she hung up.
I stood there in a daze, still cradling my daughter’s body and walked over to Gloria.
The moment she saw us, she knew. Her eyes welled with tears. There was no saving Claudia now.
“This is my fault,” she whispered. “I should’ve never forced you to marry Regina just because I once saved your life. I used that debt to make you save the Seco Enterprises when we were drowning.”
Then she looked at me, her voice shaking.
“But Luciano… for the sake of everything we’ve been through, please… give Gina one more chance. Before Hector came back, you three were happy. She did love you. It’s just… she’s been blinded by him all over again.”
Her words stirred up memories I’d buried.
Ten years ago, Hector had left Regina in the hospital after a car crash, stole 300 million from the company and vanished. The Seco Enterprises collapsed overnight. They couldn’t even afford Regina’s hospital bills.
That’s when Gloria came to me. I was already a rising executive at a rival firm. She was an old woman then, but she still knelt in front of me, begging me to marry Regina and take over the failing Seco Enterprises.
And I said yes.
I had never forgotten how, when I was just a boy, Gloria had saved my mother’s life by finding a specialist when no one else could. She had paid for my schooling all the way through college.
I agreed to marry Regina out of gratitude.
Over the next three years, I rebuilt Seco Enterprises from the ground up. I stayed by Regina’s side through her stroke recovery, from her hospital bed to the wheelchair and eventually to her feet again.
After she gave birth to our daughter, I stepped away from work and devoted myself entirely to raising Claudia, so Regina could return to the career she loved.