The impact was minimal, a light brush of coats,
but in a room full of trained eyes, a sudden halt was an event.
Aldrich stepped back automatically, his hand reaching for the inner lining of his jacket—a muscle-memory habit formed over two decades in a world where space was territory. His security detail closed in by half a step, their faces deadpan, eyes sweeping the immediate air.
"My apologies," Riona said instantly, keeping her pitch low, her accent flat and stripped of the slight French cadence she had reabsorbed during the flight in. She did not raise her chin. She kept her posture soft, invisible, the posture of a bystander making an exit.
"Riona."
The word came out low, raspy, as if his vocal cords hadn't processed the air required to say her name in nearly a decade.
She stopped moving. To keep walking now would be an admission of panic, and panic was something Aldrich Ferrante hunted for sport. She lifted her head slowly, meeting his gaze for the first time in eight years.
He looked older, yes, but the sharpness in his structure had narrowed down to something lethal. The fine tailored wool of his coat, the obsidian cufflinks, the immaculate cut of his dark hair—all of it was a thin shell over a man who ruled Montreal's underworld through terrifying calculation. But right now, his mask was cracked.
His gray-green eyes were fixed on her face, searching her features with a frantic, silent intensity that made her throat tighten.
"Aldrich," she said, her voice dropping into a neutral tone that betrayed nothing. "My condolences on Cosmo's passing."
"Where have you been?" he asked. He didn't ask how she was. He didn't ask why she was standing in the side aisle of Saint Patrick's. The question was raw, stripped of all diplomatic grace, delivered like a demand from a man who had searched every stone in the province and found nothing.
"Living," she answered simply. "Excuse us. We were just leaving."
She made to take a step toward the arched exit, her hand tightening around Anel's warm fingers. But Aldrich’s eyes shifted downward.
For three seconds, the entire basilica seemed to lose its sound. The low hum of organ pipes, the rustle of winter coats, the quiet murmurs of grief—everything vanished beneath the sudden, terrifying weight of Aldrich Ferrante’s attention dropping to the little boy standing by her side.
Anel did not hide. He had been taught not to cower, but to observe. He stood straight in his dark coat, looking up at the towering man with a calm, analytical curiosity.
And there, in the dim, golden light filtering through the stained-glass windows, the resemblance hit the air like a physical blow.
The sharp line of the jaw. The dark, unruly hair that refused to lay flat near the temple. And above all, the eyes—a striking, unmistakable shade of gray-green, piercing and cold, surrounded by dark lashes. It was the exact gaze that had terrified rivals across eastern Canada for fifteen years, looking up from the face of a seven-year-old child.
Aldrich stood entirely still. His shoulders locked. The two guards behind him caught the sight and froze, their eyes widening slightly as they did the instant mental math.
"Riona," Aldrich whispered. His voice was no longer commanding; it was fractured, threadbare. He stepped forward, dropping to one knee right there on the cold marble floor of the aisle, ignoring the lingering crowd, ignoring his security, ignoring the casket of his grandfather fifty feet away.
He was at eye level with the boy. He stared at Anel's face as if looking at a ghost.
"How old is he?" Aldrich asked. His hands hovered in the space between them, trembling slightly before he forced them back to his sides.
Riona felt her heart hammer against her ribs like a trapped bird. This was the moment she had rehearsed a thousand times in dark rooms in Vancouver, the question that had kept her awake through feverish nights and terrifying mornings.
"He's seven," she said.
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush bone.
Aldrich didn't blink. He did the math in his head, the numbers aligning with brutal, irrefutable logic. Eight years ago she had vanished. Seven years ago she had given birth. The timeline did not leave room for a single doubt, a single defense, or a single lie.
"Seven," Aldrich repeated, the word leaving his lips like a breath of smoke. He looked up at Riona, his gray-green eyes burning with a volatile mix of realization, agonizing regret, and rising rage. "You had my son... and you kept him in the dark for seven years?"
"I kept him safe," Riona corrected him in a fierce, low hiss, leaning down to block Anel slightly with her arm. "Which is something he never would have been in your house."
Before Aldrich could answer, a shadow fell over the group. A tall, slicked-back man with a scar running through his left eyebrow stepped out from the main crowd, holding an leather-bound ledger against his ribs.
May you like
Roland Vain. The man who had set the fire eight years ago.
"Aldrich," Roland said, his eyes flicking from Riona to the child with a razor-thin, dangerous smile. "The family is waiting at the cars. We have the reading of the ledger at the estate in an hour. Is there... a problem here?"
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