Part 2
For a long moment, I could not breathe.
Liam’s words remained in"s" the air between us, small and impossible.
“She said you’re our daddy.”
Lucas had stopped eating. His fingers were wrapped so tightly around his milk cup that his knuckles had turned pale. Liam watched me with the grave seriousness of a child who had already learned that adults could break promises without warning.
I looked at their faces again.
The blue eyes. The sharp noses. The stubborn set of their mouths.
Mine.
God help me, they were mine.
I stood too quickly, and my chair rolled backward, hitting the glass wall behind me. Both boys flinched.
That sound went through me like a blade.
“I’m sorry,” I said at once.
The apology felt foreign in my mouth. I could count on one hand the number of times I had said those words in this office and meant them.
I crouched in front of them, lowering myself until I was no longer towering.
“I need to ask you something,” I said. “Did your mother tell you to come here today?”
Liam nodded.
“She said if she didn’t wake up, we had to go to the tall green building.”
Emerald Tower.
My blood turned cold.
“If she didn’t wake up?” I repeated.
Lucas whispered, “Mommy was tired.”
Liam shot him a warning look, but Lucas kept going, his voice small.
“She was sleeping on the floor.”
The room seemed to shrink around me.
I reached for the edge of my desk, needing something solid. “Where?”
“At home,” Liam said. “But then the lady came.”
“What lady?”
“The lady with the red scarf.”
Claire stepped forward behind me. “Mr. Miller—”
I raised one hand, silencing her without looking away from the boys.
“What did the lady do?” I asked.
“She cried,” Liam said. “She said we had to leave fast. She put us in a yellow car. She gave the driver money and told him your name.”
“Did she come with you?”
Liam shook his head.
Lucas added, “She said she couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Lucas looked at the backpack in his lap. “Because the bad man was coming back.”
The office fell silent.
Outside the windows, Manhattan glittered in the morning sun as if the whole city had not just tilted off its axis.
I turned to Claire. “Cancel my entire day.”
She blinked. “The Mercer acquisition—”
“Cancel it.”
“The board call—”
“Cancel everything.”
She swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“And get Walter Hale here. Now.”
Claire left quickly, her heels tapping against the marble floor.
Walter Hale had been my private investigator for twelve years. Former NYPD. Former federal task force. A man who could find a buried secret if you gave him a name and a reason.
I now had both.
I looked back at the boys.
“Do you know your last name?”
Liam nodded. “Carter.”
Emma Carter.
The name opened a door in me I had nailed shut years ago.
Emma had been twenty-nine when I met her, a photographer with paint on her fingers and sunlight in her hair. She had laughed at my suits, hated my office, and called me “Mr. Manhattan” when I tried to impress her with things that cost too much.
She had been the only person who never seemed afraid of me.
And I had loved her.
Not conveniently. Not politely.
Completely.
Then five years ago, I had walked away.
No, that was too gentle.
I had destroyed us.
A merger. A scandal. A pregnancy rumor involving another executive’s wife that could have ruined the firm if my name appeared anywhere near instability. My father had warned me that love made men sloppy. Emma had asked me to choose something real.
I chose the company.
A week later, I found a check she had supposedly accepted from my father’s attorney. Two million dollars. A signed agreement. No contact.
I told myself she had taken the money.
I told myself love had a price after all.
