Chapter 3 - The Letter Isabelle Left Behind
The next morning, Damian arranged a DNA test.
For three days he barely slept.
Lily continued wandering into his study, unaware that his entire life depended on a laboratory envelope.
On the first day, she gave him a drawing.
“What is it?”
“A horse.”
Damian studied the blue object with six legs.
“Obviously.”
She grinned.
On the second day, she brought toast.
“Mommy says you forgot breakfast.”
He ate it.
On the third day, Lily simply climbed into his lap with Mr. Bun.
She stayed there silently.
Damian rested his chin against her hair.
He wanted to tell her.
He wanted to say, I am your father.
Instead he held her until she climbed down and left.
The laboratory envelope arrived before dawn.
Probability of paternity: 99.99 percent.
Damian read the line three times.
Then the most feared man in half of Chicago covered his face with both hands and cried.
He had a daughter.
She had been living under his roof for ten months.
And someone had already stolen three years from them.
By sunrise, his grief had become something colder.
Because if Isabelle had been framed by someone inside his organization, that person could still be watching.
Damian folded the DNA report and locked it away.
Nobody would learn Lily was his daughter.
Not yet.
He would smile.
He would wait.
And he would find the person who had destroyed his family.
Damian stopped dyeing the white streak in his hair.
That was the first change.
The second was breakfast.
The Iron King of Chicago, a man who could negotiate a million-dollar shipping agreement without looking at a contract twice, discovered that scrambled eggs were considerably more complicated.
His first attempt burned.
His second was raw.
On the third morning, Lily sat at the kitchen island watching him suspiciously.
“Mister?”
“Yes?”
“Mommy cooks eggs better.”
“I’m aware.”
“Maybe you should practice.”
Damian looked over his shoulder.
Elena quickly hid a smile behind her coffee mug.
A week later, Lily noticed his hair.
She nearly fell out of her booster seat.
“Mister!”
Damian turned.
She pointed.
“You have white hair like me!”
He touched the streak at his temple.
Apparently removing twenty years of hair dye had finally revealed enough of it.
Lily scrambled down.
She stood on tiptoe and compared their hair.
Then she planted both hands on her hips.
“We’re probably family.”
Elena went completely still.
Damian crouched before Lily.
Her blue eyes were bright.
“Probably,” he said softly.
Lily wrapped her arms around his neck.
Damian closed his eyes.
“Yes, sweetheart,” he whispered.
“We’re family.”
That same evening, Elena brought him a small oak box.
“Isabelle gave me this the night before she disappeared.”
Damian stared at it.
“She told me not to open it. She said I would know when you were ready.”
Inside was Isabelle’s wedding necklace.
A letter.
And a stack of financial documents.
Damian opened the letter first.
Isabelle told him that she had never betrayed him.
She had discovered someone siphoning money from the organization and secretly selling transportation schedules to rival crews.
Four Vescari employees had died in attacks because of leaked routes.
Isabelle had traced the theft through shell companies.
She had hidden the final evidence.
The letter did not name the traitor directly.
It did not need to.
Damian turned to the financial documents.
Every authorization ended with the same initials.
V.H.
Victor Hale.
For several seconds Damian felt nothing.
Then twenty-five years of memories crashed into him.
Victor teaching him chess.
Victor standing beside his father’s grave.
Victor placing a hand on Damian’s shoulder after Isabelle disappeared.
Victor saying, You did what you had to do.
Damian rose.
“Enzo.”
His security chief entered.
“Find Isabelle.”
Enzo’s eyes sharpened.
“You think she’s alive?”
“If Victor framed her instead of killing her immediately, he wanted something.”
“The missing evidence.”
May you like
Damian nodded.
“And if she never gave it to him…”
