Chapter 2
I moved Claire and the girls into my private residence before sunrise.
Not because Claire agreed.
Because she could barely stand.
The physician treated her fever while Ella refused to leave the bedside. Sophie woke crying once, and Ella immediately tried to lift her despite being four years old.
I stopped her gently.
“I’ve got her.”
Ella stared at me.
Suspicious.
Then at Sophie.
Then back at me.
“You know babies?”
Almost.
I had missed every part that would have taught me.
“No.”
That answer seemed to satisfy her more than a lie would have.
I held Sophie badly.
Claire corrected my arm position from the bed.
Old instinct.
Familiarity.
That hurt.
When the physician left, I sat across from Claire.
Ella had finally fallen asleep curled beside her mother.
Sophie rested in a crib brought in from storage.
“Start at the beginning.”
Claire looked at me.
“No.”
I frowned.
“I need—”
“You need the truth.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t make me start where you’re comfortable.”
That stopped me.
Good.
She continued.
“Start with the night I disappeared.”
I remembered.
Four years earlier.
Dinner canceled.
Phone dead.
Claire’s apartment emptied.
One note on the table.
I can’t live like this.
I had kept that note.
Hated it.
Memorized every word.
Claire stared at me.
“I didn’t write it.”
My hands tightened.
“I know.”
“No.”
Her voice shook.
“You know now.”
Fair.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked toward the envelope.
“Janice?”
Claire laughed weakly.
“Janice was nobody then.”
Interesting.
“Who was somebody?”
She hesitated.
“Your brother.”
I went still.
Vincent Bellrose.
Dead two years.
Older by six.
The man who took control of security while I spent months tearing through the city looking for Claire.
The man who told me to stop searching.
The man who said some women cannot survive beside men like us.
I stared.
“What did Vincent do?”
Claire closed her eyes.
“He came to my apartment the night before Ella was born.”
Four years ago.
Pregnant.
Alone.
“Did he know?”
“Yes.”
“About Ella?”
“Yes.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
My voice dropped.
“What did he tell you?”
Claire looked toward our sleeping daughter.
“He said if I ever told you the baby was yours, you would lose everything.”
I almost laughed.
“I already had everything.”
“No.”
Her eyes returned to mine.
“He said the family had already chosen your future wife.”
Silence.
I understood.
Not romance.
Succession.
May you like
Control.
And Vincent had made Claire believe a pregnant woman stood between me and the structure I was supposed to inherit.
