Chapter 2
“Where’s your mom?” I asked softly.
The boy looked down at his bear.
“She’s not our mom,” he said.
Flat.
Rehearsed.
Like it had been practiced too many times to count.
I swallowed hard. “What are your names?”
“I’m Lily,” the girl whispered. “That’s Owen.”
“How old are you?”
“Five,” Owen said. “We’re twins.”
I lowered myself to sit beside them instead of standing over them. My men formed a loose perimeter, but I signaled them back.
“Is someone coming for you?” I asked.
Lily slowly shook her head.
My chest went cold.
For fifteen years, I had built myself into a man people feared. Ryker Steel didn’t hesitate. Ryker Steel didn’t soften. Ryker Steel didn’t get involved unless power, money, or blood demanded it.
But those two children sat there like they had already been forgotten.
And something inside me broke.
“Do you know where your father is?” I asked.
Owen’s lip trembled.
“He died,” Lily said quietly. “She said we were too much trouble now.”
Marco muttered a curse behind me.
I looked toward the closed boarding door, then back at the twins.
Their stepmother thought she had disappeared into the sky.
She was wrong.
I pulled out my phone and made one call.
“Stop that plane,” I said. “And find the woman in the beige coat.”
Lily’s small hand slipped into mine.
And that was the moment I decided they would never be left behind again.
He shrugged.
Lily’s fingers tightened around mine. “Nobody.”
May you like
Marco stepped closer, his expression tight. He had worked for me eight years. I had seen him face armed men without blinking, negotiate deals with people twice his size, and drive through Chicago snowstorms as if ice were no more serious than rain.
But he could not look at those children without swallowing hard.
