Updated Apr 16, 2026 • ~15 min read
Chapter 6: Sofia Gets Sick
Luna
Luna is in the middle of formatting a presentation for Matthias’s afternoon meeting with potential investors when her phone vibrates on her desk with an incoming call, and her heart immediately jumps into panic mode because Carmen knows Luna is at work and would never call during business hours unless something is wrong, unless Sofia is hurt or sick or in some kind of trouble that requires immediate maternal intervention.
She grabs her phone with shaking hands and sees Carmen’s name on the screen, confirms her worst fears, and answers before the second ring finishes because when it comes to Sofia, every second matters, every delay feels like failure.
“Carmen? What’s wrong?” Luna asks, keeping her voice low because she’s at her desk in the middle of the open office and the last thing she needs is everyone overhearing her personal crisis, but panic makes her words sharp, urgent, stripped of any pretense of calm.
“Don’t panic,” Carmen says immediately, which of course makes Luna panic more because people only say “don’t panic” when there’s absolutely a reason to panic. “Sofia has a fever. It spiked to 102 about twenty minutes ago. She’s asking for you. You need to come get her.”
Luna’s vision actually narrows for a second, her entire world condensing to the words “fever” and “102” and the mental image of her baby feeling sick and scared and wanting her mama—and Luna isn’t there, is stuck at work doing presentations and scheduling meetings while Sofia needs her, which makes her feel like the worst mother in the world even though she knows rationally that working to support her daughter doesn’t make her a bad parent.
“I’m leaving right now,” Luna says, already standing up and grabbing her purse from under her desk, her mind racing through logistics—subway will take forty minutes this time of day, maybe she should splurge on an Uber even though it’ll eat through her carefully budgeted transportation money, maybe she can catch a cab on the street and save the surge pricing—
“Is everything okay?” Matthias’s voice cuts through her panic, and Luna looks up to find him standing by her desk with concern written across his features, probably attracted by her sudden movement and the barely controlled fear in her voice.
“Family emergency,” Luna manages, shoving her phone in her purse and looking around for her coat even though she’s pretty sure she hung it in the closet this morning. “I need to go.”
“What kind of—” Matthias starts, but Luna can’t do this right now, can’t field questions or explain her personal life when Sofia is sick and waiting for her, when every second she stands here talking is another second her daughter is without her.
“My daughter is sick!” Luna interrupts, the words bursting out with more force than she intended, loud enough that a few nearby coworkers glance over with curious expressions—and the instant the confession leaves her mouth, Luna realizes what she’s just revealed, how much information she’s handed Matthias without meaning to, but she can’t take it back and honestly doesn’t care because Sofia is all that matters right now.
Matthias’s face goes through several expressions in rapid succession—shock, confusion, something that might be calculation as he does mental math, and then concern that looks genuine enough to make Luna’s defenses crack slightly because he looks like he actually cares that her child is sick, like this matters to him even though he has no connection to Sofia, no reason to be invested in the wellbeing of his assistant’s daughter.
“You have a daughter?” Matthias asks, and there’s something strange in his voice, something Luna doesn’t have time to analyze because she needs to leave, needs to get to Sofia, needs to be the mother her child deserves instead of standing here having relationship conversations with her boss who also happens to be Sofia’s father who doesn’t know Sofia exists.
“Yes,” Luna says shortly, finally spotting her coat hanging by the conference room and moving to grab it. “Is that a problem?”
“No! No, I just… didn’t know,” Matthias says, and he looks genuinely shaken, like this information has knocked him off balance in some fundamental way—but Luna doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to care about his feelings right now when her own are screaming at her to get to her baby.
She’s pulling on her coat and heading for the elevator when Matthias catches up to her, his longer stride eating up the distance she’s trying to put between them.
“Let me drive you,” Matthias offers, and Luna’s automatic response is to refuse because she doesn’t need his help, doesn’t want to owe him anything, doesn’t want him anywhere near Sofia’s daycare where he might see her, might notice those grey eyes that match his exactly—
But then she thinks about subway delays and cab availability and the fact that Matthias probably has a driver waiting downstairs who could get her to Queens faster than any other option available to her, and pragmatism wins over pride because Sofia is sick and needs her and Luna’s feelings about Matthias are less important than getting to her daughter as quickly as possible.
“Okay,” Luna hears herself agree, and Matthias is already pulling out his phone to text his driver, already moving toward the elevator with the kind of decisive efficiency that Luna recognizes from watching him work, the same focused intensity he brings to business deals now directed toward helping her.
The elevator ride down is silent except for Luna’s racing thoughts and pounding heart, her anxiety spiraling through worst-case scenarios—what if 102 is just the beginning and Sofia’s fever spikes higher, what if it’s something serious like meningitis or pneumonia, what if Luna is too late, what if her daughter needed her and she wasn’t there—
“She’ll be okay,” Matthias says quietly, and Luna startles because she forgot he was standing next to her, forgot everything except her panic about Sofia. “Kids get fevers. It’s scary but usually not serious.”
“Do you have children?” Luna asks, the question automatic, and then immediately regrets it because of course he doesn’t have children, she would know if he had children because Sofia would have siblings, because the investigative Googling she did four years ago when she was pregnant would have turned up some society page photos of Matthias Wolfe with his perfect family—
“No,” Matthias confirms, and there’s something wistful in his voice that Luna doesn’t have the capacity to examine right now. “But my sister has three. I’ve learned that parental panic is usually worse than the actual crisis.”
His driver is waiting at the curb when they exit the building, a sleek black car that probably costs more than Luna makes in a year, and Matthias opens the back door for her with the kind of automatic courtesy that would normally make her bristle at the implication she needs help but right now just makes her grateful because her hands are shaking too much to handle simple tasks.
“Queens,” Matthias tells his driver, and then to Luna: “What’s the address?”
Luna rattles off Carmen’s daycare address while buckling her seatbelt with fingers that won’t quite cooperate, and then they’re moving, merging into Midtown traffic with the kind of aggressive efficiency that suggests Matthias’s driver is very good at his job and possibly has some experience with emergency situations.
“How old is your daughter?” Matthias asks after a few minutes of silence, his voice careful, like he’s trying not to spook her with too many questions—and Luna knows she should lie, should add a year or subtract one to throw him off the scent, should protect her secret with the same ferocity she’s maintained for three years.
But she’s exhausted and terrified and Sofia is sick, and Luna just doesn’t have the energy to maintain elaborate deceptions right now when all she wants is to hold her baby and make sure she’s okay.
“Three,” Luna says, staring out the window at passing buildings instead of looking at Matthias’s face, not wanting to see if he’s doing the math, calculating timelines, figuring out that three years old plus nine months of pregnancy equals a conception date that’s suspiciously close to their night together.
She can feel Matthias looking at her, can sense the weight of his attention like a physical thing, and Luna braces herself for the question she knows is coming—is she mine? did you get pregnant that night? why didn’t you tell me?—but it doesn’t come, and when she risks a glance at him, he’s staring out his own window with an expression she can’t read.
The drive to Queens takes twenty-five minutes that feel like hours, Luna’s anxiety ratcheting higher with every red light and traffic slowdown, her mind creating increasingly dramatic scenarios of what she’ll find when she gets to the daycare—until finally, finally, they’re pulling up in front of Carmen’s cheerful storefront with its bright murals and hand-painted sign, and Luna is out of the car before it fully stops, practically running for the entrance.
Carmen meets her at the door with Sofia in her arms, and Luna’s heart clenches at the sight of her daughter—flushed cheeks and glassy eyes and that particular look of miserable exhaustion that sick children get, the kind that makes parents want to absorb all their pain and take it into their own bodies if it would help.
“Mama,” Sofia whimpers, reaching for Luna with grabby hands, and Luna takes her daughter into her arms and breathes in the familiar scent of her even though she’s radiating heat like a tiny furnace, her skin hot enough that Luna can feel it through their clothes.
“I’ve got you, baby,” Luna murmurs, pressing her lips to Sofia’s forehead in the universal parental fever-check and confirming that yes, she’s definitely running hot. “Mama’s here. You’re going to be okay.”
“I gave her children’s Tylenol about thirty minutes ago,” Carmen says, her voice pitched low so as not to disturb Sofia, who’s already burying her face in Luna’s neck with the kind of total trust that makes Luna’s chest ache with love and responsibility. “Fever was 102.3, so not dangerous yet, but definitely high enough to warrant picking her up. She’s been asking for you for the past hour.”
Guilt swamps Luna because her daughter was asking for her and she was at work doing presentations about data analytics that suddenly seem completely meaningless compared to this, compared to being there when Sofia needed her.
“Thank you for calling,” Luna manages, and Carmen’s expression softens with understanding because she knows Luna, knows about the constant working-mother guilt, knows that Luna is always one crisis away from feeling like she’s failing at everything.
“Luna?” Matthias’s voice comes from behind her, and Luna turns to find him standing in the daycare entrance looking completely out of place in his thousand-dollar suit among the finger paintings and alphabet posters, his eyes locked on Sofia with an intensity that makes Luna’s heart start racing for entirely different reasons.
He’s looking at Sofia the way Luna dreaded he would look at her—with dawning recognition, with shock, with the growing certainty of someone who sees his own features reflected in a stranger’s face.
Sofia lifts her head from Luna’s shoulder at the unfamiliar voice, her fever-bright grey eyes—Matthias’s eyes—focusing on him with a child’s unfiltered curiosity.
“Who’s that, Mama?” Sofia asks, her voice hoarse from crying and fever, and Luna’s mind goes completely blank because how does she answer that question, how does she introduce Matthias to the daughter he doesn’t know exists, how does she manage this situation that’s spiraling out of her control with every passing second.
“This is Mr. Wolfe,” Luna hears herself say, defaulting to professional distance as protection even though it’s probably too late for that, even though Matthias is staring at Sofia like he’s seeing a ghost. “He gave Mama a ride to come get you.”
“Thank you,” Sofia says with the automatic politeness that Luna has drilled into her, and Matthias makes a sound that’s not quite a laugh and not quite a sob, something broken and overwhelmed that makes Luna want to run, to grab Sofia and disappear before this whole carefully constructed house of lies collapses around her.
“We should go,” Luna says to no one in particular, already moving toward the door with Sofia in her arms, desperate to extract them both from this situation before Matthias asks the question she can see forming behind his eyes, the question she’s not ready to answer in the middle of Carmen’s daycare with Sofia sick and miserable in her arms.
But Matthias follows her out to the car, opens the door for her again, helps her settle Sofia into the backseat even though there’s no car seat and this is probably illegal—but Luna is too exhausted to care about proper safety protocols when her daughter is sick and her secret is on the verge of exposure and her entire world feels like it’s tilting on its axis.
“Where to?” Matthias’s driver asks, and Luna gives her apartment address in Queens without thinking, too focused on Sofia’s hot forehead and rapid breathing to consider the implications of Matthias now knowing where she lives.
The drive to her apartment is silent except for Sofia’s occasional whimpers and Luna’s soft reassurances, and Luna can feel Matthias watching them, can sense him putting pieces together, drawing conclusions that Luna has spent three years preventing him from reaching.
When they pull up in front of her modest apartment building—nothing like Matthias’s Tribeca penthouse, just a standard Queens walk-up with aging brick and functional architecture—Luna expects him to stay in the car, to let his driver take him back to Manhattan and his important business while Luna deals with her sick child.
But he gets out when she does, follows her to the building entrance with that same focused intensity he brings to everything, and when Luna turns to thank him for the ride and dismiss him, the words die in her throat because of the way he’s looking at her.
Like he knows.
Like he’s figured it out.
Like everything is about to change.
“Luna,” Matthias says quietly, and there’s something almost pleading in his voice. “We need to talk.”
“Not now,” Luna says firmly, hitching Sofia higher in her arms because her daughter is getting heavy and Luna’s arms are shaking from adrenaline and fear and exhaustion. “Sofia needs me.”
“Then when?” Matthias presses, and Luna can see he’s not going to let this go, not going to pretend he didn’t see what he saw, not going to politely ignore the obvious truth that Sofia’s grey eyes and dark curls and the timing of her age all point to one impossible, life-changing conclusion.
“I don’t know,” Luna admits, because she doesn’t—doesn’t know when she’ll be ready for this conversation, doesn’t know how to explain three years of secrets and lies and protective silence, doesn’t know if there’s any version of the truth that doesn’t end with her losing everything she’s built.
“Soon,” Matthias says, and it’s not quite a demand but it’s not quite a request either, something in between that suggests he’s willing to give her space but not infinite amounts of it. “Please, Luna. I need to understand.”
Luna nods because what else can she do when Sofia is burning up in her arms and Matthias is looking at her like she holds the answers to questions he’s been asking for years, and then she’s escaping into her building before he can ask anything else, before she breaks down and tells him everything right here on the sidewalk with her sick daughter as witness.
Carmen calls thirty minutes later, after Luna has gotten Sofia changed into pajamas and settled on the couch with juice and more Tylenol and her favorite stuffed elephant.
“Want to tell me why Matthias Wolfe was at my daycare looking at Sofia like he just discovered the meaning of life?” Carmen asks without preamble, and Luna wants to laugh or cry or possibly both.
“He saw her,” Luna says unnecessarily. “I couldn’t hide her. She was sick and I panicked and he drove me, and now he knows, or at least he suspects, and Carmen I don’t know what to do.”
“Tell him the truth,” Carmen says simply, like it’s that easy, like the truth is a gift instead of a bomb.
“And then what?” Luna asks, smoothing Sofia’s damp curls back from her forehead while her daughter dozes fitfully against her side. “What if he tries to take her? What if he doesn’t want her? What if he—”
“What if he steps up?” Carmen interrupts gently. “What if he surprises you? What if Sofia gets to have a father?”
Luna doesn’t have an answer for that, can’t let herself hope for that outcome when disappointment is so much more familiar, so much safer than risking her heart and Sofia’s future on a man who left once and could leave again.
But Sofia stirs against her, mumbling “Mama” in her sleep, and Luna holds her daughter close and knows that the decision is no longer hers to make—Matthias saw Sofia, recognized something in her, and now the truth is inevitable whether Luna is ready for it or not.
The only question is how much damage the truth will do when it finally comes out.
And whether any of them will survive it intact.
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