Chapter 1
The first thing Alessandra did was pick up Tobin’s drawing from beneath Vanessa’s heel.
She didn’t look at Vanessa while she did it.
She smoothed the wrinkled paper against her thigh, folded it carefully, and slipped it into the inside pocket of her jacket.
Then she crouched beside her son.
Tobin had stopped crying loudly. That frightened her more.
He was holding his stuffed shark against his chest with both arms, watching the adults around him as if he had already learned that grown-ups could become dangerous without warning.
“Come here.”
He went into her arms immediately.
Behind them, Ethan groaned beneath the fallen heater screen. Two bodyguards moved toward him, but Alessandra lifted one hand.
“Don’t touch him unless he gets up.”
Nobody argued.
Gavin pushed himself upright against the sculpture case.
“Alessandra, listen to me.”
She looked at him.
His cheek was already reddening where she had struck him.
“How long?”
Gavin glanced at Vanessa again.
Vanessa’s face had gone rigid.
Sybil answered instead.
“Long enough that this family needs to stop pretending Tobin is Gavin’s only responsibility.”
Alessandra’s grip tightened around her son.
“So there is another child.”
“Mom,” Gavin warned.
Sybil ignored him.
“A boy.”
The word seemed chosen carefully.
Alessandra looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa finally spoke.
“My son’s name is Milo.”
“How old?”
“Six.”
Alessandra turned back toward Gavin.
She and Gavin had been married five years.
They had been together almost seven.
Gavin rubbed his mouth.
“It isn’t as simple as you think.”
Vanessa whispered, “Gavin.”
Again, he looked at her.
Not at his wife.
Not at his mother.
At Vanessa.
Alessandra rose with Tobin in her arms.
Around them, conversations had stopped pretending not to listen.
Gavin noticed too.
“Please,” he said. “Not here.”
Alessandra almost laughed.
He had allowed his mother to dump a three-year-old’s bedroom onto a gala floor in front of the most powerful people their family knew.
Now he wanted privacy.
She turned to her security chief.
“Take Tobin downstairs. My suite. Nobody enters except me.”
Tobin clutched her collar.
“No.”
Alessandra touched her forehead to his.
“I’m coming.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She waited until he left with a bodyguard he trusted.
Then she turned back.
“Now,” she told Gavin, “you can explain why my son was evicted from his own room for a child I’ve never met.”
Gavin looked toward Sybil.
May you like
Sybil’s expression told Alessandra something before anyone spoke.
Whatever had happened, her husband was not the only person who had been keeping it from her.
