Maddox Creed 3

1. Maddox Creed

MADDOX CREED

Speechless was a fucking understatement. Five minutes must’ve gone by, and I was still standing in the same spot trying to make sense of the bombshell Gia had just dropped on me. My mind kept replaying those two words over and over again.

Your wife.

Luciana was my wife…

The woman I built a life with…

The woman carrying my child…

The woman who had stood beside me through every win, every loss, every setback, and every success… So yeah, hearing some shit like that wasn’t exactly easy to swallow.

Running my hand over my beard, I let out a slow breath before looking at Gia again.

“Come again?” I asked. “Fuck you mean, my wife?”

Gia looked away immediately, and that alone pissed me off. When she still didn’t answer, I shook my head.

“Nah. Don’t do that. You said what you said, now explain that shit… Fuck you mean, my wife?”

Her shoulders dropped as she huffed out a heavy breath.

“See? This is exactly what I was trying to avoid.”

“Avoid what?”

“Being the reason somebody’s marriage falls apart.”

“Man, fuck all that,” I cut her off. “What the fuck my wife got to do with this?”

The crazy part was I already understood what she was implying.

I just couldn’t make myself believe it.

How the fuck was I supposed to believe something like that about Luciana? She had always been in my corner as far as I knew. Always rooting for me. Always wanting what was best for me and our family. Every memory I had of her pointed in the opposite direction of what Gia was trying to tell me.

That’s why my chest felt tight and my head was starting to pound, because either Gia was lying… Or my entire marriage wasn’t what the fuck I thought it was.

“You don’t believe me. Do you?” Gia asked in a low tone.

I let out a humorless laugh and said nothing, just letting the question linger between us.

If somebody sat me down yesterday and told me Luciana Creed knew about my daughter and kept that information from me for years, I would’ve laughed in their face and told them they lost their damn mind. That’s how crazy this shit was.

Gia looked exhausted, like she’d been carrying this secret around for years and finally reached a point where she couldn’t hold it anymore.

Without saying another word, she reached for the envelope sitting on the counter and slowly pushed it toward me.

My eyes immediately dropped to it as she told me, “Read it.”

My jaw tightened.

“Gia—”

“Read it, Maddox.” Something in her voice stopped me from arguing. I didn’t know if it was the defeat or the fact that she sounded like somebody who already knew there was no coming back from this conversation.

Whatever it was, it had me slowly grabbing the envelope. The paper felt heavier than it should’ve. Yet, against my will, I pulled the documents free and started reading.

At first, it looked like every other legal document I’d ever seen. Pages full of language designed to confuse people. Signatures. Dates. Paragraphs of bullshit nobody actually read unless they absolutely had to.

Then I flipped another page… and another… The further I got, the tighter my jaw became.

My eyes moved lower across the paper before completely stopping. For a second, I thought I was reading it wrong.

I read the line again…

Then again…

Then one more time… because there, in black and white, wasn’t just proof that somebody knew about Nylah years ago.

There was proof that somebody had actively worked to keep her from me.

Proof that meetings had happened, agreements had been made, decisions had been made for me, and the name attached to those decisions wasn’t a stranger’s.

It wasn’t some random lawyer. It wasn’t one of my father’s old associates. It was somebody I trusted. Somebody I loved more than my gotdamn self. Somebody I went home to every night.

Slowly, I lifted my eyes from the paperwork and looked back at Gia.

This time, I wasn’t asking questions because I wanted reassurance. I was asking because I needed the truth—all of it.

“Tell me everything.” Those words came out calmer than I felt.

Gia stared at me for a second, and I could practically see the debate happening behind her eyes. Part of her still wanted to protect somebody. Maybe me. Maybe herself. Maybe Luciana. Hell, maybe all three of us, but the problem was, we were way past that now.

I wasn’t looking for half-ass-truths anymore.

I wasn’t looking for the version of the story that sounded better. I wanted all of it.

She took a seat in one of the kitchen chairs.

The paperwork remained spread across the counter between us like a grenade somebody had already pulled the pin on.

A few minutes ago, I would’ve told anybody they were out of their damn mind if they accused Luciana of something like this.

Now I was standing here staring at legal documents with my wife’s name attached to them and realizing I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.

Gia dragged her hand across her face before letting out a slow breath.

“I found out I was pregnant a few weeks after Vegas.” I said nothing when she said that. Not because I didn’t have questions, but because if I interrupted her now, I knew we’d end up all over the place.

“I was scared,” she admitted. “Not just because I was pregnant. I was twenty-two, Maddox. Twenty-two and carrying a baby by somebody I barely knew. Every day I kept asking myself what I was supposed to do.”

My jaw tightened, but it wasn’t at her. It was at the situation, because there should’ve never been a question. If she was carrying my child, I should’ve known. Simple.

“I kept going back and forth about telling you.” She continued. “One minute I’d convince myself I could do it alone. The next minute I’d feel guilty because you deserved to know.”

Her eyes then dropped toward the paperwork.

“That’s when I started emailing.” I leaned back against the counter, crossing my arms over my chest.

“The business email?” I wanted to know. I had two emails, a business one and a personal one that only family knew about. Hell, I barely even used the mothafucka, myself.

She nodded.

“Yeah. I found it online. I didn’t even know if it was the right one. I just knew it was connected to one of your companies when I searched your name.” She paused. “At first nobody answered. Weeks went by. Then eventually somebody responded.” She paused again to laugh. “I remember being excited.”

I dropped my head and shook it. Not because she was excited or no shit like that, but because she should’ve been able to call me directly. She should’ve been able to look me in my face. She should’ve been able to tell me herself.

Instead, she was excited about a damn email.

“What did they say when they responded back?” I asked. Yeah, she said it was my wife behind this, and the proof was right in my face, but it was crazy because how the fuck did Luciana get in my email? That was the real question.

“That we needed to talk privately,” she answered with a heavy sigh. “And that certain conversations couldn’t happen through email.”

Gia was young, pregnant, scared, and trying to do the right thing. People in that position didn’t always see red flags for what they were. So, I couldn’t really blame any of this on her.

“I thought it was you,” she said quietly. “Every email. Every response. Every conversation. I thought I was talking to you.”

I looked away for a second and rubbed my hand over my beard.

The thought of her sitting somewhere believing she was communicating with me while somebody else played middleman behind the scenes made my blood pressure spike, because of how calculated it was.

None of this shit sounded accidental or like a misunderstanding.

It sounded planned.

“So they flew you to Vegas.” That wasn’t a question.

Gia nodded and said, “I thought I was meeting up with you.”

She was trying to meet up with me, meanwhile, I was somewhere living my life completely unaware that a woman carrying my child was trying to reach me. Trying to tell me something that would’ve changed everything.

“What happened when you got there?”

Gia’s eyes briefly closed before opening again.

“I walked in expecting to see you.” She swallowed hard. “Instead, there were lawyers. There was security. Papers sitting on the table. Everybody already knew why I was there before I even sat down.”

I didn’t say anything because I didn’t trust myself to.

It was like, the more she talked, the harder it became to deny what was sitting right in front of me, and the more I listened, the more one question kept pushing itself to the front of my mind.

Why… Why the fuck would my wife do something like this?

That was the part I couldn’t get past.

Not the paperwork…

Not the lawyers…

Not even the fact that my daughter had existed all these years without me knowing…

It was… Why? Because no matter how many times I turned the situation over in my head, it still didn’t make sense.

Luciana wasn’t some random woman I met six months ago. She wasn’t somebody I barely knew. This was my wife. The mother of my children. The woman who had spent years building a life beside me.

So why the fuck would she do something like this?

Gia must’ve seen the question all over my face because she looked down before speaking again.

“I don’t know what she told herself to justify it,” she told me. “I don’t know if she thought she was protecting ya’ll relationship. I don’t know if she thought she was protecting you, or what. Hell, I don’t know what she believed back then.”

My eyes narrowed as I searched her face for answers before asking, “But you know it was her?”

Gia slowly nodded.

“There wasn’t no confusion. She told me who she was when I got there, which I already knew from the pictures I saw on the internet.”

I pushed away from the counter and started pacing the kitchen. Not because I was angry. Not yet. My mind simply refused to sit still.

Every answer she gave me seemed to connect another piece of something I’d never known existed.

“You never tried reaching out again?” That question left my mouth before I could stop it.

Gia let out a soft laugh and asked, “To who?”

“To me!”