Chapter 1
I boarded a Christmas Eve flight ready to close a $780 million deal, only to discover that the woman I once planned to marry had hidden something from me for nearly three years. The betrayal was devastating enough, but then a little boy with my green eyes handed me a red crayon, and I realized the two children sitting beside her might be mine.
My name is Damon Prescott. Until that night, I believed ambition had a price worth paying.
“Sorry,” the boy whispered when the crayon rolled against my shoe. “It escaped.”
He looked barely three. Sandy-brown curls. Green eyes.
Then he smiled.
My stomach dropped.
He had my dimple.
“What’s your name?”
“Luke.”
“Luke, sweetheart, come back here.”
I froze.
I knew that voice.
Three rows behind me stood Cassandra Hayes, the woman I had loved enough to imagine growing old beside. She held a little girl clutching a gray stuffed elephant.
The girl looked at me.
Same green eyes.
“Damon?” Cassandra whispered.
My mind did what it always did under pressure. It calculated.
We had separated three years earlier.
The children looked about two and a half.
And our final night together had been roughly nine months before their likely birth.
“Cassandra,” I said, barely breathing. “Who are these children?”
Before she answered, a flight attendant ordered me back to first class for departure.
My phone buzzed as I sat down.
The acquisition team was waiting in Denver. If I didn’t sign before midnight, Merritt Systems might accept our competitor’s offer.
Nine months of negotiations. $780 million.
Suddenly, I couldn’t care less.
Twenty rows behind me sat two children who might have spent their entire lives without knowing I existed.
When turbulence hit, the little girl started crying.
“It’s okay, Violet,” Cassandra murmured. “The clouds are just dancing.”
That nearly broke me.
Cassandra used to turn every frightening thing into something gentle. Thunder became clouds moving furniture. Blackouts became indoor camping.
The moment the seatbelt sign disappeared, I walked back.
“May I sit?”
Cassandra hesitated, then moved aside.
Luke studied me. Violet disappeared behind her elephant.
I kept my voice low.
“Tell me the truth.”
Cassandra stared at me for several painful seconds.
“They’re yours.”
Everything inside me went silent.
Their births.
First steps.
First words.
Birthdays.
Christmas mornings.
All gone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her eyes filled.
“I tried, Damon.”
“No. You didn’t.”
“I did.”
Then Cassandra reached into her bag.
She pulled out a thick envelope, worn at the corners, and placed it in my hands.
My name was written across the front.
Inside were unopened letters.
Hospital documents.
Photographs.
And one certified envelope bearing the letterhead of my own company.
I recognized the signature at the bottom immediately.
It belonged to the one person I had trusted with everything.
Cassandra watched my face change.
“You really didn’t know, did you?”
I looked at the twins, then back at the proof trembling in my hands.
Someone hadn’t merely kept my children from me.
May you like
Someone inside my own world had made certain I would never find them.
And suddenly, the $780 million deal waiting in Denver was no longer the biggest betrayal I had to worry about.
