Chapter 5 - The Uninvited Guest
At 2:00 PM, a modest black sedan pulled up to the curb outside our older brick apartment building in West Loop. There were no motorcades, no bodyguards, no flashy sports cars.
Ethan stepped out alone. He was wearing simple jeans and a dark navy sweater—the exact style of clothes he used to wear when we were broke college students living off instant noodles and dreams.
I opened the door to our two-bedroom apartment.
Ethan stood in the narrow hallway, holding two large stuffed bears and a sleek, high-end laptop box. He looked nervous, his hands trembling as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"Hi," he said softly.
"Come in," I said, stepping aside.
He stepped into our modest living room. It was small, warm, and filled with memories: framed photos of the twins' first days at school, finger-paintings taped to the refrigerator, and stacks of library books on the coffee table. It was a home—something Ethan’s pristine thirty-million-dollar mansion had never been.
Sophie ran out from her bedroom, stopping short when she saw the massive pink stuffed bear Ethan was holding.
"Is that... for me?" she asked softly.
Ethan dropped to his knees right there on the worn hardwood floor, tears springing to his eyes instantly. "Yes, sweetheart. It's for you."
Sophie walked over slowly, taking the bear and hugging it against her chest. "Thank you. It's very soft."
Ethan reached out a trembling hand, gently touching a curl of her hair. "You look just like your mother when I first met her," he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.
Noah walked out of his room next, holding his hands in his pockets. He looked down at Ethan kneeling on the floor, then eyed the expensive laptop box resting on the couch.
"Custom Razer Blade laptop with an Intel i9 processor and 64GB of RAM?" Noah asked, raising an eyebrow.
Ethan looked up, wiping a tear from his cheek with his sleeve. "I called a tech developer last night. He said it was the best machine for coding and financial modeling."
Noah walked over, inspected the box, and nodded approvingly. "Acceptable bribery. I’ll grant you twenty minutes of conversation."
Ethan let out a wet, genuine laugh—the first real sound of joy I had heard from him in ten years.
For the next forty-five minutes, I watched from the kitchen counter as Ethan sat on the floor with our children. He helped Sophie color her sketchbook, listened intently as Noah explained his plan for an AI-driven stock analysis algorithm, and answered every single question they asked him with absolute honesty.
He didn't make excuses. When Noah asked why he hadn't visited them, Ethan looked his son in the eye and said, "Because I was stupid, foolish, and let bad people make my decisions for me. And it's the biggest mistake I will ever make in my life."
For a fleeting moment, as the afternoon sun filtered through the living room window, shedding a warm light over the four of us, I felt a strange, terrifying phantom of the life we could have had.
Then, the front door of the apartment was violently kicked open.
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Evelyn Sullivan walked inside, flanked by two burly private security guards and a photographer holding a high-powered camera lens.
"Ethan!" Evelyn shrieked, pointing her finger at us. "I knew you were here! Step away from those children right now! This entire scene is a set-up to ruin your reputation!"
