Chapter 3 - THE TEMPORARY HOLD
Thirty minutes later, the open house was wrapping up. The balloons were deflating, the silver cookie trays were empty, and the county family center was returning to its grim, fluorescent quiet.
In a small private consultation office in the back, June sat on a vinyl sofa, swinging her feet. Her small sneakers—one with a white lace, one with a black—barely reached the edge of the cushions. Nathan sat across from her at a laminate desk, his assistant Laura standing outside the door like a sentry.
Clara Vance walked into the room, holding a ringing office landline phone. Her expression was a mixture of shock and sheer disbelief.
“The presiding judge of the 5th Judicial District just signed an emergency temporary custody placement order,” Clara said, looking at Nathan as if he were a ghost. “Your legal team managed to bypass a four-month evaluation process in forty-five minutes.”
“I pay them twenty thousand dollars an hour to perform miracles,” Nathan replied flatly, getting to his feet. “Does that mean she leaves with me?”
“Provisionally,” Clara warned, handing him a thick folder of yellow carbon-copy documents. “You have emergency custody for seventy-two hours. A social worker will conduct an unannounced home inspection tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM. If your residence fails to meet state child safety standards, or if there is any evidence that June’s emotional well-being is compromised, she returns to the county shelter immediately. Am I clear, Mr. Cole?”
“Crystal,” Nathan said.
He turned to June. The little girl had stood up from the sofa, clutching her small brown backpack—the sum total of her worldly possessions—against her chest.
“Ready to go, June?” Nathan asked softly.
June looked at him, then at the door, then down at her mismatched shoelaces. “Am I... going to stay at a shelter?”
“No,” Nathan said firmly. “You’re coming to my house.”
Five minutes later, they stepped out into the crisp Pittsburgh evening air. A sleek, midnight-black Maybach sedan was parked directly at the curb, its tinted windows gleaming beneath the streetlights.
Nathan opened the rear door for her. June hesitated, staring at the spotless leather interior as if it were a spaceship. She looked down at her dirty sneakers.
“I might mess it up,” she whispered. “I can sit in the trunk.”
Nathan felt a cold blade twist in his heart. “June, you are never sitting in a trunk. And you can’t mess anything up in this car that a wet rag can’t fix. Get in.”
She climbed in cautiously, sitting right on the edge of the leather seat. Nathan climbed in beside her, closing the heavy door. The quiet of the luxury vehicle swallowed the sounds of the city street.
As the driver smoothly pulled into traffic, June stared out the tinted window at the passing city lights. She pulled her blue coat tight around herself.
“Uncle Nate?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, June?”
“Why did Mommy tell me not to talk about her brother to the social workers?”
Nathan turned his head to look at her in the dim light of the back seat. “What do you mean?”
June pulled her knees up to her chest. “Before Mommy went to sleep in the hospital, she told me that if anything happened to her, some bad people from her adoptive family would try to take me away so I couldn't get her trust fund. She told me to hide my middle name unless I found you.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed into slits of ice. The Hawthorne family—the wealthy real estate magnates who had adopted Vivian twenty-two years ago.
“Did somebody try to take you, June?” Nathan asked, his voice dangerously low.
June nodded slowly. “A man in a sharp blue suit came to the hospital three days after Mommy died. He told the doctors he was my uncle Richard. But Mommy showed me a picture of Uncle Richard before she died, and she told me never, ever to get in a car with him.”
Nathan took out his phone and sent a rapid text message to Arthur Sterling, his legal chief:
“Investigate the Hawthorne family estate immediately. Find out who Richard Hawthorne is, what trust Vivian left behind, and why he’s hunting her nine-year-old daughter.”
May you like
Nathan looked back at June. She had rested her head against the cool glass of the car window, her eyelids heavy with exhaustion. The construction-paper heart was still clutched tightly in her little fist.
“You’re safe now, June,” Nathan said softly, extending his arm across the back of the seat. “Nobody is ever going to take you again.”
