Chapter 4 - TWELVE YEARS OF LIES
The walnut-paneled office felt smaller now, filled with the crushing weight of twelve years of buried history.
Grace pulled her hands away from her face, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her uniform. She looked at Adrian—at the scars on his broad shoulders, at the dark eyes that had haunted her dreams for over a decade.
“I didn't run away because I hated you, Adrian,” Grace whispered, her voice choked with grief. “I ran because your father found me.”
Adrian felt his blood run cold. “My father?”
“Two days after you left Lake Geneva,” Grace said, her eyes fixed on his, “Arthur Cross walked into my apartment with three armed men. He threw a stack of cash onto my table and showed me a photograph of my younger brother.”
She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing. “He told me that if I ever tried to contact you again, if I ever told anyone what happened in that cabin, he would kill my brother and bury me in the lake. He said a mob boss’s son didn't marry nursing students. He had already arranged your future with the DeLucas.”
Adrian gripped the edge of the leather sofa, his white knuckles straining. His father’s shadow still reached out from the grave, poisoning everything it had ever touched.
“I was terrified, Adrian,” Grace wept softly. “I took the money, packed my bag, and moved to Milwaukee. Two months later, I found out I was pregnant.”
Adrian looked down at Lily. The little girl was snoring softly, her small thumb tucked into her mouth.
His daughter.
The realization washed over him in waves of intense, agonizing clarity. He had spent twelve years fighting a hollow, bloody war for territory, money, and power, believing he was completely alone in the world—while his flesh and blood was living in a cramped basement apartment three floors beneath his office, cleaning his floors for twenty dollars an hour.
“Why didn't you tell me when you came to work here?” Adrian asked, his voice shaking with restrained emotion.
“Your father was dead, but the war wasn't,” Grace said. “I saw your face on the news every month. Gunfights at the docks. Bombings in the city. I realized that if anyone in your world found out that I had your child, Lily would become a target. A leverage piece. So I applied for the maid position under my mother’s maiden name. I just wanted to be close enough to ensure you were alive... and to raise my daughter in a house with real security walls.”
Adrian slowly reached down, touching Lily’s small, soft forehead with the tip of his trembling finger.
“She’s four,” Adrian said quietly. “Where were you for the first eight years?”
Grace hesitated, her eyes filling with fresh terror.
“Grace,” Adrian urged softly. “Tell me.”
“Thomas DeLuca found me in Milwaukee four years ago,” Grace confessed, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “He realized who Lily was. He threatened to tell your father’s old captains that I had an illegitimate heir. He forced me to move back to Chicago. He was the one who placed me inside this estate.”
Adrian’s jaw locked. His dark eyes flared with a lethal, terrifying flame.
“Thomas DeLuca put you in my house?”
“He told me I was his insurance policy,” Grace sobbed. “He said if the DeLucas ever needed leverage over you, he would use Lily. And today... today he walked into the estate wearing a black suit and a gold watch.”
Adrian stood up slowly to his full height. The quiet, melancholic man vanished entirely, replaced by the ruthless monarch of the Cross syndicate.
Thomas DeLuca hadn't just planted a gun in his sister’s wedding dress to start a war. He had planted a weapon inside the estate using Grace and Lily as unwitting cover—planning to assassinate Adrian, frame the DeLucas, and take control of both syndicates in the resulting chaos.
The heavy oak door opened without a knock.
Marcus Hale walked into the office, holding a tablet. “Adrian, Vincent DeLuca is getting impatient downstairs. He’s demanding to see his daughter, or he’s calling his men up from the city—”
Marcus stopped dead in his tracks.
He looked at Grace kneeling on the floor. He looked at the sleeping child.
May you like
Then he looked at Adrian.
And Marcus reached into his jacket, pulling out his suppressed nine-millimeter pistol.
