Chapter 3 - The Shadow of the PastThe room fell into an absolute, suffocating silence. Even the air vents seemed to quiet down.
Kai stared at me, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. He slowly raised his hands and gripped my wrists, not violently, but with a terrifying tightness that signaled I was never getting away from him again.
“Explain,” Kai growled. “Every single word. Now.”
I looked back at Lily, who was watching us with wide, frightened eyes.
“Lev,” Kai ordered without breaking eye contact with me. “Take the child to the east wing library. Put on whatever cartoons she wants. Give her anything she asks for. Guards on every door, but if any of your men so much as frown at her, I’ll skin them alive.”
Lev nodded instantly. “Understood, Boss.”
“Lily, go with the nice man,” I said, trying to force a reassuring smile through my tears. “Mommy just needs to talk to Kai about adult things. I’ll be right there in a few minutes.”
Lily hesitated, holding her silver locket tightly, but she eventually nodded, sliding off the high bed and taking Lev’s large, scarred hand. “Can I have another cookie?”
“You can have the whole bakery, kid,” Lev grunted softly as he led her out, closing the heavy mahogany door behind them.
The moment the latch clicked shut, Kai hauled me up by my wrists, pinning me against the frame of the mahogany door. His chest was heaving, his face inches from mine.
“Talk,” he spat.
“Fifteen years ago, my father was Arthur Vance,” I gasped out, watching his eyes widen slightly in recognition. “I was twenty-one. I was forced to sit in meetings where my father and the Moretti syndicate planned the hit on your family's motorcade in Downtown Hartford.”
“The Vance family were cowards who financed the bombs,” Kai whispered coldly.
“Yes! They were! But I wasn't!” Tears poured down my face, hot and fast. “The night before the attack, I heard my father talking to Lorenzo Moretti. The bomb was never meant to kill Clara, Kai. It was meant to destroy your father’s pride. Lorenzo wanted Clara alive—as a trophy, as a leverage tool for the next thirty years!”
Kai’s grip on my wrists tightened so much I could feel my pulse throbbing against his fingers. “Clara was inside that car…”
“She was supposed to be in that car!” I cried out. “They ambushed her three miles before the secondary explosion! They threw her into the basement of an abandoned textile mill near the river. The car that exploded in Hartford? It was filled with pig remains and synthetic prosthetics to fake her death so you wouldn't search for a living hostage!”
Kai recoiled as if he had been shot in the chest. He staggered back two steps, his hand flying to his forehead as if trying to physically hold his brain together.
“No…” he breathed, his voice breaking into a ragged sob. “No, no, no… I identified the teeth… the forensics…”
“Your head of security back then was bought by Lorenzo Moretti!” I yelled. “He faked the forensic reports to close the case so you wouldn't drag the entire East Coast into a bloodbath looking for her!”
“Where is she?” Kai suddenly lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders, his eyes wild with unhinged desperation. “Where is my sister, Maya?! Where is Clara?!”
I choked back a sob, looking down at his polished black shoes.
“She died seven years ago, Kai,” I whispered.
Kai went completely still.
“What?” he breathed.
“She was kept in a basement for eight years by Lorenzo’s men,” I sobbed, the heavy guilt of seven years finally bursting out of my soul. “I found out where they were keeping her. I spent three years plotting a way to get her out. When I finally bribed a guard and broke into that basement… Clara was twenty-two, but she was broken. She had been abused, starved… she was dying of an untreated pulmonary infection.”
Kai let out a sound that didn't belong to a human being—a low, animalistic howl of pure, unadulterated agony that echoed off the high walls of the mansion.
“I got her out,” I continued through my tears. “I took her to a safehouse in Vermont. I tried to treat her, but it was too late. Her lungs were completely ruined. She lived for three months in that small cottage with me.”
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I looked up into Kai’s shattered face.
“She gave birth to Lily in that cottage, Kai. Clara was pregnant when I rescued her. She died forty minutes after Lily was born. Her last words were to hide the baby from the Morettis… and to protect her from the war.”
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