Chapter 2 - The Cage Door Slams Shut
Twenty-two minutes later, Claire Sterling was frog-marched through the soundproof glass doors of the executive suite by two armed private security guards.
Her beige wool coat was slightly rumpled, her designer handbag clutched like a shield against her chest, and her face was flushed a furious, mottled crimson. She looked less like a grieving widow and more like a cornered animal realizing the trap had snapped shut.
“This is an outrage!” she shrieked the moment she crossed the threshold, her eyes darting frantically around the room before landing on me. “Do you know who my husband was? Do you know who I am? I am an elite passenger! I missed an international connection because some lunatic in a suit ordered the ground crew to pull me off the—!”
She stopped dead in her tracks.
Her gaze shifted from my face down to the corner of the suite, where Lily and Owen were sitting quietly on a plush leather sofa, watching her with dead, emotionless eyes.
For a fraction of a second, the color drained entirely from Claire’s face. A flicker of sheer, unadulterated panic crossed her features. Then, her defensive mask snapped back into place, hard and brittle.
“Oh. Them,” she scoffed, tossing her head back with an artificial laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. “So, what? You’re some kind of bleeding-heart hero who picks up stray kids? Take them! Please! They’re dead weight. Their father left me with a mountain of debt, and I refuse to ruin my life playing nanny to a dead man’s mistakes.”
I didn’t stand up immediately. I poured myself a single finger of amber scotch, swirling the liquid lazily against the crystal glass.
“You left them on a public bench in a terminal handling thousands of travelers a day, Claire,” I said softly, not even looking at her. “In the eyes of the law, that isn’t just abandonment. That’s child endangerment with intent to discard.”
“They were fine!” she snapped, stepping forward, though Marco smoothly blocked her path with a wall of black-suited muscle. “They know how to sit quietly! I gave them a snack! Plenty of parents drop kids off with relatives or—well, nobody wanted them, okay? They’re brats. They cry at night. They eat into what little estate Arthur left behind. You want them? They’re yours. Free of charge. Sign whatever papers you want, I renounce all custody rights right here and now.”
I finally raised my eyes. The coldness in my gaze made her take an involuntary half-step back.
“Oh, you’ll sign papers, all right,” I murmured, standing up slowly and buttoning my jacket. “Every single document necessary to strip you of your guardianship, your inheritance rights, and any claim to Arthur Steel’s estate.”
Claire froze. The color rushed back to her face, this time in sheer, blazing fury. “Arthur... Arthur was your—?”
“My younger brother,” I finished, my voice dropping an octave as I stepped closer to her, towering over her by half a foot. “The brother whose tragic car accident you spent the last six months weeping about on social media while secretly liquidating his assets and plotting how to ditch his children so you could fly off to Paris with your younger lover.”
May you like
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. The air in the room grew suffocatingly heavy.
“You thought you could make them disappear,” I whispered, my face inches from hers. “Instead, you just handed me the keys to your entire legal destruction. Marco, lock the doors. We have a contract to write.”
