Chapter 4 - The Truth Unveiled
The air in the room grew cold, the warmth of the velvet blankets failing to protect me from the dark aura radiating off the man sitting beside me.
I gripped the silk sheet tightly. "If I tell you... he will find out. He has power, Mr. Vance. He has money, lawyers, judges—"
"Ava," Elias interrupted, his voice surprisingly soft despite the terrifying intensity in his eyes. "Look at me."
I raised my eyes to meet his steel-gray gaze.
"There is no one in this city—no politician, no judge, no billionaire—who holds more power than I do inside these walls," Elias said with absolute, unshakeable certainty. "When you are under my roof, you do not fear any man. Now give me his name."
I took a deep breath, the pain in my chest tight and sharp.
"Julian Miller," I whispered. "He's... he's the chief executive officer of Miller Global Logistics."
Elias’s eyes flickered, a dangerous, cold smile touching the corner of his lips. "Julian Miller. The pious, philanthropist billionaire who sits on the mayor’s economic council."
"He wanted a son," I sobbed, the humiliation and rage rising back to the surface. "For four years, he treated me like an incubator. He told me his empire needed an heir. When I went into labor early... when the doctor said they were twin girls... he looked at them like they were monsters. He called them a curse."
Elias didn't interrupt. He listened in absolute silence as I laid out the nightmare of my marriage—the emotional abuse, the isolation, the control, and finally, the ultimate betrayal of being thrown onto the freezing pavement hours after my body was ripped open to give birth to his children.
By the time I finished, my voice was a broken whisper. "He left us to die because he believed my daughters were worthless. Because they weren't boys."
Elias stood up slowly.
He was tall—easily six-foot-three—and his broad frame cast a long, dark shadow across the polished wooden floor. He didn't yell. He didn't slam his fists. But the atmosphere in the room shifted so violently that I felt as if the oxygen was being sucked out of the space.
He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the grey skyline of Manhattan. He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a gold lighter, and lit a thin black cigarette, exhaling a slow plume of gray smoke against the glass.
"A man who discards his own blood because of their gender is not a man," Elias said softly, his voice dripping with an ancient, dark disgust. "He is a coward wearing a expensive suit."
Before I could answer, a soft, high-pitched cry drifted through the wall from the adjoining room.
It was a infant’s cry.
My motherly instinct flared instantly. I tried to swing my legs over the side of the bed, forgetting my stitches, and let out a sharp cry of agony as pain tore through my lower stomach.
In a flash, Elias was beside me.
He didn't touch my waist where the wound was; instead, he caught my arms gently, steadying me before I could fall to the floor. "Stay down, Ava."
"My babies need me—"
"I will fetch them," he said calmly.
He turned and opened the heavy mahogany double doors leading to the nursery. I watched from the bed, my breath catching in my throat as this feared, legendary crime lord walked into the sunlit room.
A minute later, he walked back out.
My jaw dropped.
Elias Vance—the man who controlled the underworld of New York—was holding two tiny, pastel-pink bundles in his massive, tattooed arms. He held them with an awkward, extreme care, as if he were carrying two fragile pieces of blown glass. One twin rested comfortably against his left shoulder, while the other was cradled securely in the crook of his right arm.
His dark, severe face softened completely as he looked down at the tiny baby resting against his neck. The little girl reached out a tiny, wrinkled hand, her small fingers curling instinctively around Elias's gold cufflink.
Elias froze, staring at the tiny hand attached to his wrist, a look of profound, quiet awe washing over his hardened features.
"She... she likes you," I whispered, tears welling up in my eyes again—not from pain this time, but from something warm and long-forgotten.
Elias walked slowly to the edge of the bed and carefully lowered himself onto the mattress beside me. With immense patience, he transferred the twins into my arms, guiding my weak elbows so I could hold them safely against my chest.
As soon as my daughters felt my skin, their small cries ceased. They nestled against me, breathing softly.
"They are beautiful, Ava," Elias murmured, his eyes fixed on the babies. "They are not a curse. They are a miracle."
Just then, the heavy double doors of the bedroom burst open.
Marcus, Elias’s head of security, rushed in, holding a black encrypted satellite phone. His face was pale, his eyes wide with urgent concern.
"Boss," Marcus panted, stopping short when he saw the babies in my arms, then lowering his voice to a low, tense whisper. "We have a problem. Our informants at the precinct just pinged us."
May you like
Elias didn't panic. He slowly stood up, smoothing his vest. "What is it?"
"Julian Miller just filed a missing persons report," Marcus said, reading from the screen. "He's claiming his mentally unstable wife kidnapped his newborn twin daughters from the hospital and fled into the city. He's put a two-million-dollar reward on her head... and he just hired the Russo family’s mercenaries to search every block in Manhattan."
