Chapter 2 - The Shadows of Bethesda
“Where do you live, Maya?”
Sebastian’s voice cut through the damp November chill, but Maya did not answer. She pulled her coat tightly around her throat, adjusted her grip on the stroller, and stepped backward, putting distance between herself and the man who had torn her life apart four years ago.
“You don’t get to ask me that,” Maya said, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts. “You gave up the right to know where I sleep, who I see, or how I live the day you signed those papers.”
“Maya, look at me,” Sebastian took a single step forward, his hand reaching out instinctively, but he stopped short when Noah—the small boy in the middle of the triple stroller—clutched his toy dog tighter and let out a soft, frightened whimpering noise.
Seeing his son recoil knocked the breath from Sebastian’s lungs. It was a physical blow, far more painful than any bullet or blade he had encountered in the brutal underworld of the city.
Clarissa stepped up beside Sebastian, her diamond ring catching the pale autumn sunlight. Her manicured hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides. “Sebastian, this is absurd. Who is this woman? Are you honestly telling me you were married to a... a domestic? A nobody?”
Sebastian turned his head slowly. The look in his gray eyes was so frigid, so terrifyingly devoid of human warmth, that Clarissa stumbled back a step.
“Clarissa,” Sebastian said, his tone ominously flat. “Take the car. Go home.”
“What?” she gasped, her voice shrill. “Our engagement party is in two days! My father is expecting you at the club in an hour to finalize the merger terms! You cannot stand here in Central Park making a scene with a beggar and her bastard children!”
Before Clarissa could finish the word bastard, Sebastian’s hand gripped her upper arm. He didn’t squeeze hard enough to bruise, but the sheer, lethal momentum of his posture made her instantly go quiet.
“Say another word about my children,” Sebastian whispered softly, leaning in close so only she could hear, “and the Hart family will be bankrupt by nightfall. The merger is dead. Our engagement is over. Get out of my sight.”
Clarissa’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Humiliation and rage flooded her face. She looked at Maya with pure venom, turned on her designer heels, and rushed toward Fifth Avenue, her phone already pulled out to call her father.
Sebastian turned back to the fountain, but the path was empty.
During the five seconds he had spent severing his engagement, Maya had moved. She was already fifty yards away, pushing the heavy stroller with desperate, surging speed toward the exits near the subway station.
“Dante!” Sebastian barked into his lapel microphone.
From the shadow of the trees near Bethesda Terrace, his head of security, Dante Vance, materialized instantly. Dante was a built like an iron vault, a military veteran who had served the Vale family for a decade. He looked at Sebastian with wide, shocked eyes; he, too, had seen the children.
“Sir?” Dante asked, his hands hovering near his suit coat.
“Follow her,” Sebastian commanded, his chest heaving under his cashmere coat. “Do not let her see you. Do not scare her. I want an address, a security perimeter, and a full file on her life for the last four years on my desk in one hour. If so much as a shadow touches her or those kids, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
“Understood, boss,” Dante said, turning immediately to trail Maya’s retreating figure.
Sebastian stood alone beside the cold stone fountain, his mind racing through a maze of memories, lies, and blood.
Four years ago, when he had forced Maya out of his life, he had done so under the crushing weight of a war. The Volkov syndicate, their primary rivals in the city’s underground shipping routes, had put a quarter-million-dollar price tag on his heart. When his grandfather, Arthur Vale, showed him surveillance photos of Maya sitting in a diner in Brooklyn, blissfully unaware of the scope trained on her forehead, Sebastian knew he had no choice.
A Vale boss could not have a weakness. If his enemies knew he loved a sweet, ordinary schoolteacher from Queens, they would tear her apart piece by piece to break him.
So, he had broken her himself. He had played the heartless monster, severed their marriage, and thrown her away into the night, believing he was saving her life. He had spent four long years suffering in silence, hardening his empire, intending to marry Clarissa Hart solely to secure a political alliance that would finally wipe the Volkovs off the map forever.
And all the while, Maya had been carrying his blood. Three pieces of him, growing in the dark, abandoned, cold, and alone.
Two hours later, Sebastian slammed open the double doors of the private executive suite at Vale Tower on Wall Street.
Inside sat Victor Rossi—a grey-haired man in his sixties who had served as the Vale family’s chief internal security director for thirty years, serving under both Sebastian and his late grandfather, Arthur.
Victor looked up from a stack of financial ledgers, his eyebrows rising in mild surprise at Sebastian’s disheveled appearance. “Sebastian? I just received a frantic phone call from Thomas Hart. He claimed you broke off the engagement in the middle of Central Park? Surely that’s a misunderstanding—”
Sebastian didn’t speak. He walked across the vast mahogany room, grabbed Victor by the lapels of his tailored suit, and dragged him over the heavy desk, scattering papers, crystal glasses, and lamps across the floor.
“Sebastian!” Victor gasped, struggling against the iron grip choking his windpipe. “Have you lost your mind?!”
“Four years ago,” Sebastian hissed, his gray eyes flashing with an unholy fire. “A woman came to the lobby of this building. She was five months pregnant. She asked to see me. You met her downstairs.”
Victor’s face went completely pale, the color draining out of him faster than water from a broken glass. “I... I don’t know what you’re talking about...”
“Do not lie to me!” Sebastian roared, slamming the older man against the edge of the mahogany desk. “She wrote letters! She called my private line! Who took them, Victor?! Who blocked them?!”
Victor choked, clutching at Sebastian’s wrists. “It... it was Arthur! Your grandfather! He ordered it!”
Sebastian’s hands tightened for a fraction of a second before he hurled Victor back onto the carpet. “My grandfather died two years ago. Why didn’t you tell me after he was buried?”
Victor lay on the floor, rubbing his red neck, panting heavily. His eyes darted toward the door, filled with genuine fear. “Because it wasn’t just Arthur, Sebastian. Your uncle Dominic was involved too. When Arthur found out Maya was carrying triplets, he panicked. A maid’s daughter carrying three heirs to the Vale estate? It would have destroyed the family’s political standing! Dominic paid off the clinic where she went for her ultrasound. They tried to buy her off, but she refused the money and disappeared into Queens.”
Victor took a ragged breath, looking up pleadingly. “Dominic told me that if I ever breathed a word of it to you, he would have my family killed. Sebastian, you have to understand—your uncle wanted you focused on the Volkov war! He wanted the Hart merger so he could take a cut of the shipping docks!”
Sebastian stood over the groaning man, his breathing deep and quiet. The betrayal hit him with the weight of an iron mountain. His grandfather—the man who had raised him—and his uncle Dominic—the man who currently held three seats on the family’s ruling council—had systematically stolen his family from him.
They had left the woman he loved to raise three children in poverty while they counted their billions.
“Where is Dominic right now?” Sebastian asked softly.
“He... he’s at the private club in Midtown,” Victor stuttered. “Meeting with the Hart family’s lawyers...”
Sebastian reached into his coat, pulled out his encrypted phone, and dialed Dante.
“Dante,” Sebastian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “I have Maya’s location?”
“Yes, boss,” Dante’s voice came through the speaker. “An apartment building on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side. Third floor. It’s... rough, Sebastian. Rent-controlled, broken front door lock, no security. She’s currently inside with the kids.”
“Place twenty men around the block,” Sebastian ordered. “Nobody goes in or out without my permission. And Dante?”
“Sir?”
“Send a tactical squad to the Midtown Club. Arrest my uncle Dominic. Bring him to the basement vaults at the harbor house. Do not let him speak to anyone.”
“Understood, boss.”
May you like
Sebastian ended the call and walked toward the private elevator. As the steel doors began to slide shut, he looked back at Victor, who was still trembling on the floor.
“You have one hour to leave this city, Victor,” Sebastian said coldly. “If I ever see your face in New York again, I’ll bury you beside my grandfather.”
