Chapter 2 - The Diamond and the Past
The crisp November air around the Grant Park fountain suddenly felt like absolute zero.
Odalys Marchetti stared down at her left hand, where the multi-carat Kade family diamond caught the pale afternoon sun, and then her eyes snapped back to Wren Ashcombe. The sheer audacity of a woman in faded denim and a worn wool coat speaking to her—the daughter of Chicago’s second-most powerful syndicate boss—with such bitter pity made Odalys’s jaw tighten.
“You,” Odalys hissed, stepping forward with a fury that could melt iron. “Who the hell do you think you are speaking to me like—”
“Odalys, stop,” Weston said. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried the chilling, flat resonance that made his senior captains drop their eyes during turf disputes.
Odalys blinked, turning to her fiancé in total shock. “Weston? She just insulted us! She’s some random vagrant—look at her, she’s running away with those brats like a criminal—”
“She is not a vagrant,” Weston interrupted, his gaze fixed entirely on Wren, who was already turning the heavy stroller around, her knuckles white against the foam-gripped handles.
Wren’s brown eyes flashed with a dangerous, defensive fire. She had spent four years burying her past, erasing her name from public registers, and moving from one quiet Midwestern town to another just to keep her children safe from the monster she had married in secret and fled in terror. Seeing him now, standing beside a diamond-decked heiress who wore his ring, felt like a physical blow to her chest. But fear was a luxury she couldn't afford anymore. Not with three pairs of eyes depending on her.
“Stay away from us, Weston,” Wren said, her voice shaking only slightly before she hardened it into steel. “You made your choice four years ago. Enjoy your alliance. Enjoy your bride. Leave us out of it.”
“Wren, wait!” Weston took a hard step forward, ignoring the way the park tourists and nannies turned to look at the commotion.
“Mommy, who is that man?”
The small voice came from the stroller. A little girl with dark, expressive curls and a pink knitted cap leaned her head out, staring curiously at Weston with wide, intelligent eyes. Beside her, a second boy with his brother's solemn expression peeked out from under a blue blanket.
Weston stopped dead in his tracks.
The air rushed out of his lungs. Four years. Four years of believing he had acted alone in the dark, believing he had wiped every trace of their brief, passionate, terrifying marriage off the map to protect her from his enemies. And yet, looking at the little girl’s face, he saw the exact curve of Wren’s chin—and the exact slate-gray intensity of his own eyes staring back at him in triplicate.
Triplets.
She had been three months pregnant when he drove her out of his life with words sharper than switchblades.
“Wren,” Weston choked out, the name tearing through his throat like glass. “You... you had…”
“I had nothing,” Wren spat, tears finally spilling over her lashes before she angrily wiped them away with the back of her sleeve. “You made sure of that, didn't you? You told me I was a liability. You told me my blood was too clean for your world, that your enemies would carve me open just to send you a message. Well, I left. I took your advice. So why are you looking at me like I’m the one who broke a promise?”
Odalys looked between Weston’s devastated face and the three children in the stroller, her expression twisting from anger to dawning, horrified comprehension.
“Weston,” Odalys whispered, her voice trembling as she looked at her own engagement ring. “What is she talking about? Who are those children?”
Weston didn't answer her. He didn't even look back. His entire world had narrowed down to the woman pushing the stroller and the three tiny heartbeats he had never known existed.
“Wren, listen to me,” Weston pleaded, taking another step. “Let me talk to you. Let me see—”
“You’ll see nothing,” Wren snarled, her voice rising with a desperate, protective fury as she shoved the heavy stroller forward with all her might. “You missed the first four years, Weston. You don't get a second chance. If you take one more step toward my children, I swear to God I will burn your entire empire to the ground myself.”
Without waiting for his reply, she turned and broke into a run, pushing the triple stroller down the park path toward the CTA station, her coat flying behind her like the wings of a cornered bird.
Weston started to chase after her, his long strides eating up the ground, but Odalys grabbed the sleeve of his tailored wool coat with manic strength.
“Weston Kade, you take one step after that trash and this engagement is over!” Odalys screamed, her voice cracking with humiliation. “My father will pull every shipping contract, every dock union, every single investor out of the Kade syndicate before the sun sets today!”
Weston stopped. He slowly turned his head to look at Odalys. The man who had spent a decade building the most ruthless criminal syndicate in the Midwest looked at her not with anger, but with a terrifying, absolute emptiness.
He reached up, took Odalys’s hand, and deliberately slid the multi-carat Kade diamond off her finger, dropping it carelessly into her palm.
May you like
“Tell your father our alliance is canceled,” Weston said quietly.
Then he turned his back on her, leaving the future Mrs. Kade standing alone by the winter fountain as he sprinted into the Chicago crowd after a ghost he thought he had buried forever.
