Updated Apr 16, 2026 • ~16 min read
Chapter 9: The Fight
Matthias
Matthias doesn’t remember the drive back to Manhattan, his mind too consumed with replaying every moment of the past two hours—Luna’s tears, Sofia’s sleepy confusion, the feeling of holding the woman he’s been searching for while she sobbed against his chest, the overwhelming reality that he’s a father to a three-year-old he met for approximately ninety seconds four years of missed time that he can never get back.
His penthouse feels emptier than usual when he walks through the door around one in the morning, the floor-to-ceiling windows showing Manhattan spread out below in glittering indifference, the expensive furniture and modern art and all the trappings of wealth suddenly feeling hollow compared to Luna’s shabby apartment with its mismatched furniture and toys scattered across the floor and evidence of an actual life being lived within its walls.
Matthias pours himself a scotch he doesn’t really want and stands at the window looking out at the city, trying to process the emotional whiplash of the past few hours—the initial certainty when he found Sofia’s birthdate, the confrontation with Luna, the moment he saw his daughter’s face and knew with absolute conviction that she was his, the fight that followed where years of miscommunication and mutual hurt exploded into accusations and tears and desperate explanations.
How could you not tell me?
That question keeps circling through his mind, angry and hurt and confused, because Matthias understands Luna’s reasoning—she thought he abandoned her, she was protecting Sofia from potential rejection, she had no way to contact him—but understanding doesn’t erase the fact that he missed three years, that his daughter’s entire life until this point happened without him, that Luna made the choice to keep him in the dark even after he reappeared in her life three weeks ago.
Three weeks.
She worked for him for three weeks, saw him every single day, heard him apologize for disappearing and try to explain what happened—and she still didn’t tell him about Sofia, still kept that fundamental truth hidden while Matthias stumbled around trying to understand why she seemed to hate him.
The betrayal of that cuts deeper than Matthias wants to admit, makes him question everything about their interaction since he showed up at Innovate Solutions and found her sitting at that desk—was any of it real? Did she feel any of the same pull he felt, or was she just managing her boss while hiding the massive secret that would upend both their lives?
But then he remembers the way she looked at him tonight when she admitted she didn’t move on either, the way she broke down crying when he accused her of stealing his time with Sofia, the genuine pain in her voice when she described being pregnant and alone and terrified—and Matthias knows that Luna isn’t a villain in this story, she’s just someone who made the best decisions she could with incomplete information and a broken heart.
They’re both victims of that night four years ago, both paying the price for a perfect evening that ended in miscommunication and lost chances, and their daughter is caught in the middle through no fault of her own.
Sofia.
Matthias lets himself think about her now, really think about her instead of just processing the shock of her existence—those grey eyes that match his exactly, the dark curls that could be his or Luna’s, the way she said “thank you” with automatic politeness that suggests Luna has raised her to be kind, the stuffed elephant she was clutching when she wandered out to investigate why Mama was yelling.
His daughter.
The reality of it hits him again with fresh force, stealing his breath and making his hands shake around his scotch glass, because there’s a little person in the world who is half him and half Luna, who has been growing and learning and becoming a human being without him, who doesn’t know he exists beyond being “Mr. Wolfe who works with Mama.”
What three-year-old things has he missed? First words—probably “mama,” said to Luna while Matthias was in some boardroom or on some business trip, completely unaware that he had a daughter speaking for the first time. First steps—did Luna have anyone there to witness it with her, or was she alone, celebrating that milestone by herself because Matthias wasn’t there to share it? Birthdays—three of them, three years of cake and presents and Sofia getting older while Matthias remained ignorant of her existence.
The grief of those losses threatens to drown him, makes his chest ache with a physical pain that scotch isn’t going to fix, because those moments are gone forever, captured maybe in photos on Luna’s phone but lost to Matthias except as stories he might someday hear secondhand.
You stole that from me.
He said that to Luna tonight, and her face crumpled like he’d slapped her, but Matthias meant it—she did steal those years from him, made a choice that deprived him of his daughter’s early childhood, and even if her intentions were protective, even if she thought she was doing the right thing, the result is that Matthias has a hole in his life that can never be filled.
But then his anger cycles back to himself, to his own failures that created this situation—if he’d tried harder to find Luna after Berlin, if he’d hired a better investigator or refused to give up after a month, if he’d somehow managed to keep her phone number intact or gotten her last name or done any number of small things differently, maybe he would have been there from the beginning. Maybe he would have known about the pregnancy, supported Luna through it, been present for Sofia’s birth and every moment after.
I would’ve been there.
That’s what he told Luna, and he meant it absolutely—if Matthias had known she was pregnant, nothing would have kept him from her side, not business emergencies or board meetings or any of the obligations that usually consume his life. A child changes everything, reorders priorities in ways that Matthias is only beginning to understand, and he would have dropped everything to be the father Sofia deserved if only he’d known she existed.
But he didn’t know, and Luna had no way to tell him, and now they’re both trapped in the consequences of that mutual failure—him with years of missed fatherhood, her with the guilt of keeping secrets, Sofia with a family situation that’s about to become exponentially more complicated.
The scotch is gone without Matthias noticing when he drank it, the glass empty in his hand and the city lights blurring slightly as exhaustion catches up with him—but his mind is still racing, unable to settle, spiraling through possibilities and fears and the overwhelming question of what happens next.
Luna agreed to let him see Sofia, to let him build a relationship with his daughter slowly and carefully, and Matthias should be grateful for that, should appreciate that she’s willing to give him a chance despite her obvious fears—but gratitude is tangled up with resentment because he shouldn’t need Luna’s permission to see his own child, shouldn’t have to carefully negotiate for time with his daughter like he’s an outsider being granted a privilege instead of a father exercising his rights.
The thought stops Matthias cold because rights is a loaded word, implies legal frameworks and custody agreements and all the messy machinery of family law that divorced parents navigate—and Matthias and Luna aren’t divorced, aren’t even together, are just two people who slept together once and created a child and now have to figure out how to co-exist in that child’s life.
What are his rights, actually?
Matthias is a CEO, a man who solves problems through research and strategy and careful planning, so he does what he always does when facing an unknown situation—he opens his laptop and starts searching, typing “father’s rights New York” into Google and falling down a rabbit hole of legal information that makes his stomach sink with every article he reads.
Unmarried fathers have limited rights until paternity is legally established.
Mothers have sole custody by default unless a father petitions the court.
Without a custody agreement, a mother can deny a father access to their child.
The implications are terrifying—legally speaking, Matthias currently has zero rights to Sofia, zero guarantee that Luna won’t change her mind tomorrow and cut him off completely, zero protection if she decides to move to another state or country and take his daughter with her, and there’s nothing he could do to stop her because on paper, officially, he’s nobody to Sofia, just a stranger with no legal connection.
That thought makes panic claw at his throat, makes all his earlier gratitude evaporate into fear, because what if Luna gets scared? What if she decides letting him into Sofia’s life is too risky? What if she meets someone else and her new boyfriend doesn’t want Matthias around? What if any number of scenarios play out that result in him losing access to the daughter he just discovered exists?
Matthias can’t let that happen.
The certainty settles over him with absolute clarity—he can’t leave his relationship with Sofia dependent on Luna’s continued cooperation, can’t trust that emotional agreements made at midnight while both of them were crying will hold up when Luna has had time to reconsider, when her protective instincts override her willingness to share.
He needs legal protection.
The decision feels both rational and like a betrayal, because Luna trusted him tonight, let him into her home and her daughter’s life, and Matthias is already planning how to undermine that trust by involving lawyers—but he’s also protecting himself and Sofia, ensuring that their relationship doesn’t depend on Luna’s mood or fear or whatever complex emotions are driving her decisions.
It’s three in the morning when Matthias emails his personal attorney—not his business lawyers who handle contracts and acquisitions, but Richard Morrison, the family law specialist who handled his sister’s divorce and has a reputation for being both ruthless and discreet—with a brief explanation of the situation and a request for an emergency meeting first thing in the morning.
The response comes back within minutes despite the hour, because attorneys who charge $800 an hour don’t ignore emails from billionaire clients even at three a.m.:
*Mr. Wolfe – Available at 8am at my office. We’ll discuss your options. – RM*
Options.
The word should be reassuring—Matthias has options, has ways to protect his parental rights, has strategies available to ensure he doesn’t lose his daughter—but instead it just makes him feel sick, because “options” in family law usually means custody battles and court proceedings and exactly the kind of traumatic legal warfare that he told Luna he wanted to avoid.
But what choice does he have when the alternative is trusting Luna completely, gambling his entire relationship with Sofia on the hope that Luna’s current willingness to cooperate will last, accepting that at any moment she could decide to cut him out and there would be nothing he could do about it?
Matthias finally falls asleep around four, still fully dressed on his bed with his laptop open beside him, and his dreams are a confused tangle of grey-eyed children and legal documents and Luna crying while telling him he doesn’t deserve to know his own daughter.
He wakes at seven to his phone alarm, feeling like he hasn’t slept at all, and forces himself through his morning routine on autopilot—shower, suit, coffee, the familiar rituals that usually center him but today just feel mechanical, a performance of normalcy while his real thoughts are consumed with Sofia and Luna and the meeting with his attorney in forty-five minutes.
Richard Morrison’s office is in a sleek building in Midtown, all glass and marble and the kind of expensive minimalism that signals to potential clients that these lawyers are worth their astronomical fees—and Matthias is shown into a conference room within minutes of arriving, barely having time to sit down before Richard himself appears with a legal pad and an expression that manages to be both sympathetic and professionally neutral.
“Tell me everything,” Richard says without preamble, and Matthias does—the one-night stand four years ago, the lost phone number, Luna’s pregnancy, three years of ignorance, the discovery yesterday, Luna’s agreement to let him see Sofia, his fear that the agreement isn’t enough, his need for legal protection.
Richard takes notes throughout, his face giving away nothing, and when Matthias finishes the attorney is silent for a long moment before speaking.
“First thing we do is establish paternity officially,” Richard says, flipping to a fresh page on his legal pad. “Your… Sofia’s mother agreed to a test?”
“Yes,” Matthias confirms, remembering Luna’s immediate acceptance when he raised the subject. “She knows Sofia is mine. She’s not contesting it.”
“Good. That makes everything simpler,” Richard says. “We’ll arrange the test through an accredited lab, get the results on record. Once paternity is established, you petition the court for a custody arrangement—probably starting with supervised visitation given that you’ve only just met the child, working toward joint custody over time.”
“And if the mother objects?” Matthias asks, voicing his deepest fear. “If she decides she doesn’t want me involved?”
“Then we go to court,” Richard says bluntly. “And you have a strong case—biological father, financially stable, no criminal record, demonstrated interest in the child’s wellbeing. New York courts favor joint custody arrangements when both parents are fit. She can object all she wants, but unless she can prove you’re a danger to the child, she can’t keep you away.”
The words should be reassuring, but instead they make Matthias feel worse because he’s imagining having to prove in court that he deserves to know his daughter, imagining Luna being cross-examined about why she kept Sofia secret, imagining their messy history being dissected by lawyers and judges while Sofia waits somewhere, confused about why Mama and the man from work are fighting.
“I don’t want to traumatize my daughter,” Matthias says, and Richard’s expression softens slightly.
“Then you negotiate,” Richard says. “We draft a custody proposal—generous to the mother, acknowledging her role as primary caregiver, reasonable in our requests for your parental time. We present it through an attorney letter to make it official but not threatening. If she’s reasonable, she’ll agree to mediation and you’ll work it out without court. If she’s not…” Richard pauses. “Then you decide how hard you want to fight.”
“I’ll fight as hard as necessary,” Matthias says without hesitation. “She’s my daughter. I’m not walking away.”
“Then let’s draft that letter,” Richard says, and they spend the next two hours working through the details—formal request for paternity test, proposal for gradually increasing visitation, eventual goal of joint legal and physical custody, offer to pay child support retroactively and going forward, request for mediation if Luna has concerns.
The letter is professional, carefully worded to be serious without being aggressive, but Matthias knows how it will read to Luna—like a threat, like him using his money and lawyers to take Sofia away, like confirmation of every fear she expressed last night about why she didn’t tell him in the first place.
“Are you sure about this?” Richard asks when the letter is finalized, perhaps reading Matthias’s hesitation. “Once we send this, the relationship becomes adversarial. If you think you can work it out informally—”
“She could change her mind,” Matthias interrupts. “She could panic and move away and I’d have no recourse because legally I’m nothing to Sofia right now. I can’t risk that.”
“Then we send it,” Richard says, and he makes a note on his legal pad. “I’ll have it couriered to her today. Expect a response within a week, either her cooperation or her own attorney’s counter-offer.”
Matthias leaves Richard’s office feeling simultaneously relieved and sick, like he’s done something necessary but unforgivable, protected himself while betraying the fragile trust Luna extended last night—and he knows that when she receives that letter, when she reads about paternity tests and custody arrangements and mediation, she’s going to think he lied to her, that his tears and promises about taking it slow were just manipulation to get her guard down.
But what choice does he have?
His phone buzzes with a text as he’s walking back to his car, and Matthias’s heart rate spikes when he sees Luna’s name on the screen—but it’s just a simple message about work, a question about whether he needs her in the office today or if he’s working from Wolfe Industries headquarters, the kind of professional communication that feels surreal given everything that happened last night.
Matthias responds that she should take the day off, spend it with Sofia since she was sick yesterday, and Luna sends back a simple “thank you” that makes his chest ache because in a few hours she’s going to receive his attorney’s letter and that easy gratitude is going to turn into anger and fear and probably hatred.
He’s made his choice.
Protected his rights at the cost of Luna’s trust.
And Matthias can only hope that when the dust settles, when they’ve navigated lawyers and tests and custody negotiations, there will be something left to build on—some foundation of co-parenting that lets him be Sofia’s father without destroying whatever complicated thing exists between him and Luna.
But right now, sitting in his car outside his attorney’s office with the morning sun harsh through the windshield, Matthias isn’t optimistic.
He’s just scared.
Scared that he’s made a terrible mistake.
Scared that his attempt to secure his relationship with Sofia will destroy any chance of building one.
Scared that the daughter he just found will learn to associate him with conflict and lawyers and Mama crying, instead of with love and stability and the father she deserves.
But it’s too late to change course now—the letter will be delivered by this afternoon, and Matthias has to live with the consequences of choosing legal protection over faith in Luna’s goodwill.
He just hopes Sofia will forgive him someday for starting their relationship with a fight.
Reader Reactions