Chapter 3 - THREE HEIRS
The first thing Gabriel did was remove his jacket.
The second thing he did was wrap it around Eli.
My youngest son stared at him suspiciously.
“I’m not cold.”
Gabriel crouched.
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Because I need you to wear it.”
Eli considered this.
“Why?”
Gabriel blinked.
Lucas leaned toward his brother.
“He asks a lot of questions.”
“I noticed.”
For half a second, the corner of Gabriel’s mouth moved.
Then Dominic returned.
“We have the service elevators locked and NYPD outside.”
Gabriel stood.
“Who sent the photograph?”
“Burner number. Routed through three foreign servers.”
“Camera?”
“Street level. North side.”
“Photographer?”
“Gone.”
I listened to them speak in clipped phrases and remembered exactly why I had once feared raising children anywhere near Gabriel’s world.
This was normal to him.
Threats.
Surveillance.
Locked doors.
Men with guns.
I pulled his jacket off Eli and handed it back.
“We’re leaving.”
Gabriel stared at me.
“No.”
I laughed once.
“Bad word choice.”
“Claire, somebody photographed the boys.”
“And you think staying beside the man whose enemies sent the photograph is safer?”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His expression hardened.
“I know I lost the right to decide anything about your life five years ago.”
The admission struck harder than anger would have.
“But whoever sent this already knows who the boys are. Your apartment, their school, your routines—they can find those things.”
My stomach dropped.
“How do you know where we live?”
“I don’t.”
He looked at Dominic.
“Do we?”
“No.”
That mattered.
At least a little.
Gabriel continued.
“But they might.”
Noah spoke from beside me.
“Are bad people looking for us?”
I closed my eyes.
This was exactly what I had tried to prevent.
Gabriel answered before I could.
“Yes.”
I shot him a furious look.
He didn’t apologize.
“But there are more good people looking after you,” he added.
Noah studied him.
“Are you a good person?”
The room went still.
Gabriel Cross had faced prosecutors who accused him of extortion, reporters who called him a mob prince, and enemies who whispered that half the city belonged to him after midnight.
None of them had ever made him look as uncomfortable as my five-year-old son.
Finally Gabriel said, “I’m trying to be.”
Noah nodded solemnly.
“That means sometimes no.”
Dominic coughed into his fist.
I almost laughed.
Gabriel surprised me by nodding.
“Sometimes no.”
A physician Gabriel trusted arrived forty minutes later to take cheek swabs.
I hated that part.
Not because I doubted the answer.
Because the boys deserved better than learning their family history in a locked conference room while armed men stood outside.
Lucas watched the swab enter a sterile envelope.
“What’s that for?”
“To make sure Gabriel is your biological father,” I explained.
Lucas looked offended.
“We already know.”
“How?”
He pointed at Gabriel.
“He has Noah’s mad face.”
Gabriel looked toward the ceiling.
Dominic actually laughed this time.
The samples were rushed to a private laboratory.
Gabriel insisted on mine being included to eliminate any accusation of tampering.
Then we waited.
Serena sat in a separate room under guard.
Not because Gabriel had ordered her imprisoned.
He made that distinction very clear.
Because the threat had turned everyone connected to him into a possible target.
Or suspect.
At 1:13 a.m., the results arrived.
Probability of paternity:
99.9998 percent.
Gabriel read the page once.
Then again.
He sat down.
Nobody spoke.
His thumb moved over the printed names.
Noah James Carter.
Lucas Michael Carter.
Elias Henry Carter.
“You gave Lucas my middle name.”
I hadn’t realized he would notice.
Michael.
Gabriel Michael Cross.
“My grandfather’s name was Michael too.”
He looked at me.
“Right.”
It was a lie we both accepted.
He looked toward the boys, asleep together on a leather sofa beneath two borrowed blankets.
Five years old.
His.
He had missed everything.
Their first breaths.
First steps.
First words.
The night Noah split his chin climbing a bookshelf.
Lucas insisting dinosaurs should be allowed in church because God made them too.
Eli refusing to sleep without the blue elephant my father gave him.
Gabriel folded the test results.
“Do they know anything about me?”
I hesitated.
“They know their father and I were married.”
“Do they know why we divorced?”
“They’re five.”
His eyes dropped.
“Right.”
“They know you weren’t ready to be part of our family.”
That hurt him.
Good.
It should.
“What picture was Noah talking about?”
I took out my phone.
There was one photograph.
I had almost deleted it a hundred times.
Our wedding.
Gabriel and I stood outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral beneath falling snow.
I was laughing at something.
Gabriel wasn’t looking at the camera.
He was looking at me.
I handed him the phone.
His throat worked.
“They’ve seen this?”
“Once.”
“Why?”
“Lucas found it in one of Dad’s boxes.”
Gabriel handed the phone back carefully.
“Did you tell them I left?”
“I told them adults sometimes make choices that hurt people they love.”
His eyes met mine.
“And that someday, when they were older, I would explain.”
“You protected me.”
“No.”
My answer was immediate.
“I protected them from hating you before they were old enough to decide for themselves.”
He looked away.
Dominic entered.
Whatever fragile humanity had filled the room disappeared.
“We found something.”
He placed a folder on the table.
“The photographer entered using credentials assigned to the Vale Foundation.”
Serena.
Gabriel’s eyes hardened.
“Who issued them?”
“Her chief of security.”
“Where is he?”
“Missing.”
I folded my arms.
“This is connected to Serena.”
“We don’t know that.”
I stared at Gabriel.
“Seriously?”
“I know what it looks like.”
“It looks like the woman who stole a message about your newborn children might not have developed a conscience.”
His jaw tightened.
“You think I’m defending her.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
He stepped closer.
“I’m making sure I don’t accuse someone of threatening my children before I have proof.”
My children.
The phrase sounded wrong coming from him.
He corrected himself without prompting.
“Our children.”
That sounded worse.
Because part of me wanted it to sound right.
I hated that part of myself.
Dominic opened the folder.
“Serena’s security chief is Marcus Venn. Former Army Ranger. Has worked for her family nine years.”
Gabriel looked at the photograph.
“Family?”
“Her father employed him first.”
Serena’s father had been a hotel developer.
Bankrupt now.
I remembered hearing something about lawsuits.
Gabriel asked, “Financials?”
“Venn received three payments totaling $480,000 during the last six months.”
“From?”
“That’s the problem.”
Dominic slid another sheet across the table.
“Shell corporation controlled by Vincent Rourke.”
Gabriel froze.
I knew that name.
Everyone did.
Vincent Rourke had stood beside Gabriel at our wedding.
He had been Gabriel’s father’s right hand.
After Gabriel took control of the family, Vincent became his most powerful lieutenant.
Gabriel looked toward the sleeping boys.
“Where’s Vincent?”
“Not answering.”
“When did anyone last see him?”
“Eleven tonight.”
“At the gala?”
Dominic nodded.
“He left fifteen minutes after Claire arrived.”
My skin prickled.
Gabriel walked to the window.
Manhattan glittered below us.
Somewhere in those lights was a man Gabriel had trusted for almost twenty years.
A man who now knew about my sons.
Gabriel turned.
“Claire, there’s a house in Connecticut. No one outside Dominic and me knows it exists.”
“No.”
“Listen—”
“I am done being moved around because powerful men make dangerous choices.”
His eyes flashed.
“You think I don’t understand that?”
“I think understanding it five years too late doesn’t make it less true.”
He absorbed that.
Then Dominic’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed instantly.
“What do you mean?”
Gabriel crossed the room.
Dominic held up one finger, listening.
Then he ended the call.
“Claire.”
Something in his voice made my stomach twist.
“What?”
“Your apartment building.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“What about it?”
“Somebody broke in.”
I reached for the sleeping boys automatically.
Gabriel’s face became stone.
“Anything taken?”
Dominic shook his head.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“They left something.”
He turned his phone toward us.
The photograph showed my sons’ bedroom.
Their three little beds.
Their stuffed animals.
Their night-light.
And painted across the wall in red were six words.
YOU CAN’T HIDE CROSS BLOOD FOREVER.
Gabriel stared at the image.
Then he lifted his eyes to mine.
“This isn’t about discovering the boys.”
May you like
His voice was barely audible.
“They’ve been waiting for them.”
