Chapter 2: The Double-Edged Sword
“Mama!” Noah gasped, having walked over to look at the screen. He recognized the house. Tears welled up in his big blue eyes—my eyes. “Daddy, what happened to Mama?”
I pulled both boys into my arms, holding them tightly against my chest. The corporate billionaire who ruthlessly dismantled competitors was gone. In his place was a man terrified for a woman he realized he never stopped loving, and two boys he had just discovered existed.
“I’m going to find her. I promise you,” I whispered into their hair.
I looked up at Victoria. “Call my private security team. I want a forensic sweep of Elena’s home in Maine. And get my personal physician up here. I need a DNA test done immediately.”
Victoria frowned, crossing her arms. “Alex, are you insane? A DNA test will make this official. If it leaks that you have heirs, your board of directors will go into a frenzy. There are billions of dollars at stake, not to mention our upcoming merger. If this is a setup by Elena to blackmail you—”
“Watch your mouth, Victoria,” I snapped, standing up. “Elena wouldn’t do that. You don’t know her.”
“I know human nature,” Victoria argued, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “She disappears for eight years, handles this completely alone, and suddenly, right when you are about to sign the biggest tech merger in New York history, she sends two kids to your lobby and vanishes? It’s too convenient. What if she staged her own disappearance to force your hand?”
The accusation hung in the air, toxic and heavy. Part of my cynical, business-minded brain whispered that Victoria could be right. In my world, everyone had an angle. But then I looked at Lucas and Noah. Lucas was quietly comforting his crying brother, rubbing his back exactly the way my own mother used to comfort me when I was a child. It wasn’t something you could coach. It was genetic.
An hour later, my personal doctor, Dr. Aris, arrived. He took buccal swabs from me and both boys.
“How long for the results?” I asked, pacing the floor.
“For you, Alex? I’ll expedite it at my private lab. Six hours,” Dr. Aris promised, looking at the boys with a warm, knowing smile. “Though clinically speaking... I think you already know the answer.”
As Dr. Aris left, Margaret entered with a tray of food for the boys. But she also brought a troubling piece of news.
“Mr. Sterling, there’s a man downstairs claiming to be from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. He has a court order demanding immediate custody of Lucas and Noah, citing the active missing persons investigation.”
“Already?” I frowned. “The news just broke an hour ago. How could a small-town agency get a New York court order that fast?”
“He brought local NYPD escorts with him,” Margaret warned. “They’re in the elevator now.”
Victoria stepped forward, a strange, triumphant look in her eyes. “Alex, let them take the kids. It shields you from liability while we sort this out. If the media sees you harboring children wanted by another state’s police, it will destroy the company.”
I looked at the doorway. I looked at my sons. My instinct, honed by years of corporate survival, told me to protect the empire. But my heart, deadened for seven years by the belief that I was a broken man who could never leave a legacy, roared to life.
“No,” I said. “Margaret, lock down the private elevator. Redirect the NYPD to the main conference room on the 40th floor. Victoria, go stall them.”
Victoria stared at me, astonished. “You’re defying a court order? For what? Two strangers?”
“They are not strangers,” I said, my voice vibrating with absolute authority. “They are my sons. Now do your job, or find another firm.”
Anger flashed across Victoria’s face before she masked it, turning on her heel and marching out.
I turned to the boys. “We’re leaving. Through the service exit.”
As we hurried down the back stairwell, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an unknown number. I answered it immediately.
“Alex,” a breathless, terrified voice gasped through the static. It was Elena. “Did they reach you? Are they safe?”
“Elena! Where are you? What is going on?”
May you like
“Don’t trust the police, Alex! The man coming for the boys isn’t a social worker. He’s working for—”
The call abruptly cut into a horrific screech of metal and a loud crash, followed by dead silence.
