CHAPTER 2 – The Boys Who Looked Like Him
Sebastian Whitmore did not sleep that night.
Not because he tried and failed.
Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw them again.
Twin boys.
One holding a rocket notebook like it was oxygen. The other staring at cinnamon rolls like hunger had a memory of its own.
And Lucy Mercer—
counting coins like dignity could still be balanced if she was careful enough.
At 3:14 a.m., Sebastian stood in his penthouse overlooking Chicago’s frozen skyline.
Glass. Steel. Lights.
A city he had helped shape.
Yet none of it answered the question forming inside him like a crack spreading through stone.
Why did those children look like him?
He told himself it was coincidence.
Genetics didn’t work that way in fantasies.
Except his body disagreed.
Because something deep in his chest—something he had spent years silencing with money, deals, and distance—refused to settle.
By morning, he had already made the decision he would later pretend was rational.
“Find her,” he told his assistant.
No explanation.
No context.
Just those two words.
Lucy Mercer lived in a two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat that never fully stopped vibrating.
Sebastian watched from across the street.
He did not go up.
Not yet.
He saw her through the window instead.
She was packing school lunches.
Two identical brown paper bags.
Two identical routines.
And then—
the boys appeared.
Now he saw them clearly in daylight.
Same dark hair.
Same tilt of the head when they listened.
Same quiet intensity in their gaze.
One of them laughed at something Lucy said, and the sound hit Sebastian harder than any financial loss he had ever taken.
Because it sounded like something he had heard before.
In himself.
That was impossible.
He got out of the car.
His driver called after him, confused.
“Sir—your meeting—”
“Cancel it again,” Sebastian said.
He crossed the street before his mind could stop him.
And knocked.
Lucy opened the door slowly.
When she saw him, her expression did not change at first.
That was what struck him.
No shock.
No fear.
Just exhaustion recognizing a memory it had buried too deep to panic.
“Sebastian,” she said quietly.
He didn’t answer immediately.
His eyes shifted past her.
To the boys behind her legs.
They both looked up.
The same moment.
The same pause.
The same silence.
And something inside Sebastian broke open—not loudly, not dramatically—but in the way truth does when it finally stops pretending.
“You didn’t tell me,” he said.
Lucy exhaled slowly.
“I did,” she replied.
“You left before I could finish.”
That landed.
Because he remembered now.
Fragments.
Arguments.
A hospital visit he never made.
A pregnancy test on a bathroom sink.
A voice saying his name while he was already halfway out the door of a life he thought was temporary.
He had chosen ambition.
Not family.
Not then.
The boy with the notebook stepped forward slightly.
“Mom?” he asked softly. “Do you know him?”
Lucy hesitated.
Then nodded once.
“Yes,” she said.
Her voice lowered.
“He’s your father.”
The air left Sebastian’s lungs like someone had removed gravity from his body.
Not metaphorically.
Physically.
The world tilted.
The boys didn’t move closer.
They studied him.
May you like
Like he was a problem they had not yet decided whether to trust.
And for the first time in his life, Sebastian Whitmore had nothing to negotiate with.
