Chapter 3 - The Secret in the Woods
Thomas Kane had coughed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth, his fingers digging into the frozen mud.
“I don’t know who pulled the trigger inside the command net,” Thomas had gasped to Grace that afternoon eight months ago, his eyes wide with fever and pain. “The orders came through Marcus’s encryption channel. Every security asset on that route was logged by Marcus Reed. If I walk back into the estate with the child, we won’t live past sunset.”
Grace had stared down at the small bundle in the scorched carrier. A tiny hand, no larger than a plum, had curled around the edge of the blanket.
She had looked up at the billowing black smoke rising from Evelyn’s destroyed SUV. She had thought of her own daughter, Emma, waiting at home with her grandmother. And she had made a choice that defied every instinct of self-preservation.
“Give her to me,” Grace had said.
“They’ll watch the housemaids,” Thomas warned.
“They won’t watch my cousin’s cottage in Racine. Not today. Everyone will be looking at the wreckage.”
Thomas had hesitated, then unclipped a heavy silver signet ring from his chain and pressed it into Grace’s palm.
“If I don’t make it out of these woods, take this to Adrian Vale when the time is right. Tell him the wolf wears his own collar.”
An hour later, Thomas had dragged himself deeper into the ravine before the second search party arrived—the team led by Marcus Reed.
Present tense returned inside the sedan as Adrian gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned translucent. The rain lashed against the windshield, blurring the neon lights of the expressway as they crossed the city line into the working-class suburb where Grace rented a modest two-bedroom apartment.
“Where is Thomas now?” Adrian asked, his voice chillingly calm.
“Dead,” Grace whispered, covering her face with her hands. “He survived for two weeks in a safe house I set up near Kenosha. But the internal injuries were too severe. Before he died, he gave me instructions on how to care for Lily, and he made me swear on a bible that I would never, under any circumstances, let Marcus Reed find out she was breathing.”
In the back seat, little Emma was humming a quiet nursery rhyme, her small fingers stroking the ears of her gray rabbit.
“Look out the window, Emmy,” Grace murmured, her voice shaking. “We’re almost home.”
Adrian pulled the sedan into the cramped gravel driveway behind a faded brick apartment complex. He didn’t wait for the engine to cool. He cut the ignition, shoved his door open, and strode through the puddles toward the building’s side entrance.
Grace unlocked apartment 4B with trembling fingers.
The interior was warm, smelling faintly of cinnamon tea and laundry detergent. Plastic toys lined a small wooden shelf in the corner. A crib with faded yellow rails stood against the far wall of the master bedroom.
Adrian froze on the threshold.
From inside the crib came a soft, bubbling sound.
A pair of wide, dark brown eyes—eyes that mirrored Evelyn’s exact shape and depth—looked up from beneath a crown of fine, dark curls. A baby girl, eight months old, pushed herself up on chubby arms and reached toward the strange man standing in her doorway.
Adrian felt his knees buckle.
He crossed the room in two strides, falling to his knees beside the yellow crib. His hands hovered over the baby, shaking violently. He was a man who had broken syndicates, survived gunfights, and ruled a ruthless empire with absolute indifference to pain.
Yet now, touching the soft cheek of his daughter felt like holding glass over an abyss.
“Lily,” he choked out, his voice cracking for the first time in fifteen years.
The baby gurgled, grasping his thumb with astonishing strength.
Grace stood in the doorway, tears streaming down her cheeks. “She has your temper when she’s teething, Mr. Vale. And Evelyn’s nose. I... I bought her clothes from secondhand shops so no one would trace them back to your accounts.”
Adrian pulled his daughter into his arms, burying his face against her tiny shoulder as the dam broke behind his eyes. He held her so tightly she let out a small, confused squeak, but she didn’t cry. She patted his cheek with an open palm, exactly the way Evelyn used to do when he came home late from a brutal board meeting.
“You’re safe now,” Adrian whispered against her hair, a cold, dark resolve settling deep into his bones. “Both of you.”
He set Lily back into the crib, stood up, and pulled Thomas Kane’s silver signet ring from his pocket. He slid it onto his pinky finger.
“Grace,” he said, his voice dropping into a register that made the air in the room feel heavy. “Pack a bag. You and Emma are coming with me.”
May you like
“Where?”
“To a place Marcus Reed can’t reach.” Adrian turned toward the door, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. “And then, I am going back to finish the memorial.”
