Chapter 2
Mason moved Claire, Eli, and me through a hidden door behind the library shelves.
Smoke filled the hallway outside.
Our guards returned fire downstairs.
The safe house had been known to six people.
One was attacking it.
Claire could barely walk.
I carried her while Mason held Eli against his chest.
The tunnel led to a garage beneath the neighboring building.
An armored SUV waited there.
“Hospital?” Mason asked.
“St. Catherine’s.”
Claire lifted her head from my shoulder.
“No.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“Not St. Catherine’s.”
“That’s our secure hospital.”
“Your mother controls the board.”
I became still.
Bianca Kane donated the hospital’s trauma wing.
My uncle Vincent controlled its security contract.
I had called it safe because my family owned it.
Tonight, family was the danger.
“Northwestern,” I ordered.
Mason looked at me.
“Public hospital means exposure.”
“It also means my family doesn’t control it.”
We drove through the rain with two escort vehicles.
Someone followed us from the safe-house district.
Mason changed routes three times.
The sedan remained behind us.
At a red light, two of our guards boxed it in.
The driver fled on foot.
Police later found a Kane security badge in the abandoned car.
It belonged to Anthony Vale, Vincent’s personal driver.
My uncle’s connection was no longer theoretical.
At the hospital, doctors took Claire despite her attempt to keep Eli.
I promised the child would remain outside her treatment room.
“You don’t make promises you can keep in your world,” she whispered.
“I’ll keep this one.”
Her eyes held mine.
“Start now.”
Mason remained with Eli while I followed Claire’s gurney.
A nurse cut away her damaged clothes.
I stayed behind the curtain until Claire asked me not to leave.
The ultrasound technician examined her abdomen.
A rapid heartbeat filled the room.
My child.
The sound struck harder than gunfire.
“The fetus appears stable,” the doctor said. “Fourteen weeks and three days.”
Claire watched my face.
“You didn’t tell me,” I said.
“You told me the night was a mistake.”
“I said it couldn’t happen again.”
“You said your world destroys anything you love.”
“So you disappeared from my life?”
“I moved to another department.”
“You hid my child.”
“I protected my child.”
The distinction stopped me.
Claire had seen tonight what my protection looked like.
Ambushed convoys.
Compromised guards.
Exploding houses.
“You should have told me.”
“So you could surround me with men loyal to your mother or uncle?”
I had no answer.
“Someone tried to kidnap Eli while he was protected by you,” she continued. “What would they do to a baby who could inherit your personal shares?”
“My child is not an inheritance.”
“Your family disagrees.”
The doctor asked us to stop arguing while he examined her ribs.
No bones were broken.
Her finger required treatment.
The concussion was mild, but exhaustion and dehydration made her condition dangerous.
She would remain overnight.
I sat beside her after the staff left.
“Tell me about Nathan’s letter.”
Claire looked toward the door.
“Mason first.”
I called him inside with Eli.
My nephew had stopped crying.
He reached toward Claire the moment he saw her.
She held out her arms.
I nearly objected.
Then I saw what safety looked like to him.
Mason placed Eli beside her.
His tiny hand closed around her shirt again.
Claire removed Nathan’s letter from my coat.
“Nathan came to my office four days before the crash.”
“Why?”
“He knew someone was stealing from Kane Family Holdings. He believed the missing money funded attacks against your legitimate businesses.”
“Damian Cross.”
“That’s what Vincent wanted you to believe.”
She opened the envelope.
Nathan’s handwriting filled six pages.
Gabriel,
If Claire gives you this, she found enough evidence to prove I was right.
The betrayal is inside our family.
I looked at Claire.
“You read it?”
“Nathan asked me to.”
The letter described payments authorized through Bianca’s private office.
Funds moved into shell companies controlled by Vincent.
Those companies paid Damian’s rivals, corrupt police officers, and private surveillance teams.
Nathan believed Vincent was engineering a war.
“Why would my uncle attack our companies?”
“To make you appear weak,” Claire said. “If you died, Nathan would take control. If Nathan died too, Vincent became temporary trustee for Eli.”
My mother co-signed the trust agreement.
“Did Bianca know?”
“Nathan wasn’t certain.”
Another paragraph answered the question partially.
Mother has become obsessed with preserving the Kane name. Vincent tells her Gabriel wants to dissolve everything Father built.
That was true.
I had spent years moving our companies into legal businesses.
I wanted Eli raised without armed guards.
Bianca called it betrayal.
I called it survival.
Nathan’s final page contained a warning.
Olivia discovered Vincent arranged a vehicle inspection before our trip. If anything happens on the highway, it was not an accident.
My brother and his wife died when their brakes failed.
I had blamed a mechanic.
Then Damian’s men killed that mechanic before police questioned him.
A perfect chain of convenient enemies.
“Vincent murdered Nathan.”
Claire’s eyes filled.
“Possibly.”
“Not possibly.”
“Evidence matters more than rage.”
My first instinct had been to order violence.
That was exactly what Vincent expected.
“What’s on the flash drive?”
“Warehouse payment records and security logs. One folder is encrypted.”
“Can you open it?”
“I need my work computer.”
“Your office is compromised.”
“My computer isn’t there.”
“Where is it?”
“In a bank box.”
I almost smiled.
Of course Claire had hidden it somewhere no Kane could enter with a gun.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tonight.”
“You need rest.”
“My kidnapping happened because someone learned I was investigating. Every hour gives them time to erase more.”
Mason’s phone rang.
He stepped into the hallway.
When he returned, anger had replaced exhaustion.
“The safe house attackers are gone. Four were captured.”
“Who hired them?”
“They aren’t talking.”
“Make them.”
Claire looked at me.
“No.”
I turned toward her.
“They attacked my family.”
“If you torture them, any confession becomes useless in court.”
“My court has never used judges.”
“That is why your family keeps burying truth beneath bodies.”
The words hit harder because she was right.
Nathan had tried gathering evidence.
I answered his death with retaliation against Damian Cross.
Vincent had used my violence to hide his own.
I told Mason to transfer the prisoners to federal authorities.
He looked surprised.
“So we involve law enforcement?”
“We involve one agent Nathan trusted.”
Claire nodded.
“Agent Elena Brooks.”
I stared at her.
“You know about Brooks?”
“Nathan introduced us.”
My brother had built an investigation around me because he feared I would react before thinking.
Again, he had been right.
Mason left to make the call.
Claire rested one hand over her stomach.
I wanted to touch it again.
I waited.
“May I?”
She looked at me for several seconds.
Then she guided my hand gently.
There was no movement yet.
Only warmth.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I knew I could leave Chicago safely.”
The idea of her disappearing with my child woke something dark in me.
I forced it down.
“You have the right to leave.”
Claire’s expression softened slightly.
“That sentence must have hurt.”
“It did.”
“You don’t own me, Gabriel.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I’m learning.”
Eli began fussing.
Claire shifted him carefully against her chest.
A nurse entered with a bottle.
Before she reached the bed, Claire smelled it.
“Stop.”
The nurse froze.
“That isn’t his formula.”
“It came from pediatrics.”
“Eli’s allergic to soy.”
The label claimed the bottle contained his regular formula.
Claire turned it over.
A different manufacturer’s mark appeared beneath the hospital sticker.
Mason took the bottle.
The nurse insisted she had collected it from the authorized refrigerator.
Security locked down the floor.
Laboratory testing found a sedative mixed inside.
Someone had entered a public hospital, relabeled a bottle, and tried to drug Eli.
Agent Elena Brooks arrived twenty minutes later.
She was forty, calm, and unimpressed by my name.
“Your family has influence here too,” she said.
“Apparently.”
She placed a tablet on Claire’s bed.
Hospital footage showed a woman delivering the bottle while dressed as a pharmacy technician.
Mason recognized her.
“Bianca’s assistant.”
My mother’s personal aide had carried sedatives toward Nathan’s baby.
Then my phone rang.
Bianca’s name appeared.
I answered on speaker.
“Mother.”
“Bring Eli home.”
“Your assistant poisoned his formula.”
“She followed medical instructions.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
Claire became still.
Bianca continued.
“The child is overwhelmed. He needs proper family care, not an accountant who spreads her legs for her employer.”
My vision darkened.
“Speak about Claire that way again, and this call ends.”
“You think her pregnancy makes her a Kane?”
Claire looked at me.
We had told no one outside that room.
My mother already knew.
“Who informed you?” I asked.
Bianca ignored me.
“Vincent has Nathan’s original will. If Claire’s child is born, everything changes.”
“What changes?”
A second voice entered the call.
May you like
My uncle Vincent.
“Your unborn baby becomes Eli’s greatest threat.”
