PART 3:
The Chicago rain beat violently against the immense floor-to-ceiling windows of my office on the sixtieth floor of the Novalis Energy tower. The city glittered beneath the storm, but my mind was elsewhere. In the adjacent room, behind a soundproof door, my three sons—Leo, Hugo, and Liam—were sleeping peacefully on vast sofas, watched over by Marcus, my chief of security.
I looked at the reflection of my face in the glass. The naive, terrified Emma of five years ago no longer existed. She had died in that freezing hospital room in New York, the day Victoria Harrington, Blake’s older sister, had slipped to my bedside.
The memory still made me nauseous. I recalled the smell of antiseptic, the regular beep of the heart monitor, and Victoria’s marble face. “You won’t be keeping these children, Emma,” she had hissed with a deadly coldness. “Blake will destroy you in court. He’ll make you look like an unstable, unfaithful woman. And when you lose custody, these babies will be raised by nannies, far away from you. But if you disappear tonight… if you sign these papers renouncing everything, I’ll ensure he never looks for you. Make the right choice for them, or we will rip them away from you from their very first breath.”
But what Victoria didn’t know was that I hadn’t fled out of cowardice. I had fled to prepare for war.
My secure phone vibrated on the mahogany desk. It was a message from my private detective: “The target has taken the bait. Harrington has summoned his sister to The Peninsula Hotel. He is beside himself with rage.” A joyless smile stretched across my lips. The first phase of my plan had just kicked into gear.
A few miles away, in the presidential suite of The Peninsula, the air was heavy with tension. Blake Harrington, the man who controlled an empire with a snap of his fingers, was trembling with rage. Crystal glasses littered the floor, shattered.
Victoria, tightly fitted in an impeccable Chanel suit, stood near the fireplace, her face pale. For the first time in her life, she was backing down from her little brother.
“Tell me it’s not true!” Blake roared, his voice echoing like a clap of thunder. “Tell me you didn’t dare go and threaten my wife while she was carrying my children! My sons, Victoria! Three little boys who have my eyes, whom I have never seen grow up!”
Victoria raised her chin, attempting to hide her terror behind her usual mask of contempt. “It was for your own good, Blake! And for the good of Harrington Industries! That girl was nothing but a low-level researcher. She understood nothing of our world. When she was accused of cheating on you, the stocks plummeted! And you were going to forgive her for everything if you found out about the babies! You were going to go soft!”
Blake grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her with a force that ripped a gasp of surprise from her. “Accused? She never did anything! The messages came from a fucking doctor! How could you let me believe otherwise for five years? How could you look at me while I destroyed the woman I loved?!”
Victoria burst into a nervous, almost hysterical laugh. “You really think I set all this up alone? Wake up, Blake! You’re a business genius, but a personal idiot! Who ‘suggested’ you dig through her phone that night? Who ‘proved’ to you that the number belonged to a potential lover by showing you fake phone records?”
Blake froze. His hands slowly let go of his sister’s shoulders. The world around him seemed to slow down, to collapse. “Julian…” he murmured, his breath caught.
Julian Crawford. His best friend since college. The co-founder of his company. The man he considered a brother.
“Exactly,” Victoria spat, adjusting her collar. “Julian knew that Emma was on the verge of patenting a revolutionary new cold fusion technology. A technology she refused to commercialize without long years of safety testing. But Julian had already secretly promised this technology to foreign investors… dangerous people. Emma was an obstacle. She had to go.”
Blake stepped back, staggering, letting himself fall onto the edge of the sofa. The pieces of the puzzle fell together with an excruciating cruelty. Julian had poisoned his mind, instilled doubt, organized the “proof” of the affair. Victoria had done the dirty work of intimidation at the hospital. And he, like a puppet blinded by pride and jealousy, had cut the strings of his own life.
He had lost his wife. He had lost five years of his children’s lives. All of it for an inside betrayal.
“You disgust me,” Blake said softly, in a hollow voice that made Victoria shiver far more than his previous shouting. “You are no longer a part of this family. As of tomorrow, your shares are frozen. And Julian… Julian is going to beg for death when I’m through with him.”
Victoria gave a bitter smile. “You’re too late, brother. You think the meeting on the plane today was an accident? Julian discovered that Emma had resurfaced under the name of Novalis Energy in Chicago. He knew it was her buying out our competitors. He put you on that plane to see how she would react… and to locate the children.”
Blake’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean by ‘locate the children’?”
“Grandfather Arthur’s will, Blake,” Victoria whispered, her gaze shifting away. “Did you forget clause number seven? ‘If the sitting president fathers male heirs, absolute control of the company, meaning 51% of irrevocable shares, will be transferred to them on the day of their fifth birthday, under the guardianship of their mother.’ Your boys are four and a half. In six months, Julian will lose all control over the company, and his financial schemes will be uncovered during the automatic audit.”
Blake leaped up, pure terror replacing his anger. “Julian wants to kill them.”
Meanwhile, in my office, the door burst wide open. Marcus, usually so calm, had his hand on his earpiece, his face tense. “Mrs. Winters, we have a major problem. The ground-floor security system has just been hacked. Armed men are entering through the underground parking lot. Access badges have been cloned.”
I stood up abruptly, my maternal instinct screaming through my veins. “How many are there?”
“A dozen. They are professionals. Likely target: the penthouse of this building. You and the children.”
I ran toward the adjacent room. My three little boys were waking up, rubbing their eyes. Leo, sensing my panic, clung to my leg. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
“We’re going to play a game, my darlings. The game of silence,” I said in a voice I forced to be gentle, all while opening the safe hidden behind a painting to pull out the handgun Marcus had taught me to handle.
Suddenly, a silent alarm flashed red on my computer screen. The private elevator was coming up. Marcus drew his weapon, positioning himself in front of the door. I pushed the boys into the secure secret passage that led to the emergency stairwell, designed exactly for this kind of worst-case scenario.
The elevator dial displayed the floors at a breakneck speed. 57… 58… 59… A soft “ding” echoed. The elevator door opened. Marcus aimed his gun. I did too.
But it wasn’t a commando unit of killers. It was Blake.
He was drenched from the rain, without a tie, his shirt torn, panting, his face covered in a bloody scratch. He nearly collapsed as he stepped out of the cabin, his fists clenched.
“Emma…” he gasped, his eyes wild with terror as he scanned the room. “Where are they? Where are the boys? We have to leave, right now!”
I didn’t lower my weapon. “How did you get up here, Blake? The elevators are locked down.”
“I crossed paths with your attackers in the parking lot. I stole one of their cloned badges after fighting one of them. They are blocking the exits, Emma! Julian sent mercenaries. He knows about my grandfather’s will. He knows the boys inherit everything in six months!”
Blake’s words confirmed what I had discovered a few weeks earlier. It was the real reason for my return. A month ago, my car brakes had mysteriously failed. I realized someone was trying to eliminate me, and by digging into Harrington Industries’ finances, I had discovered the clause in the will and Julian’s embezzlement.
I finally lowered my gun, my gaze locking with Blake’s. For the first time in five years, we were no longer ex-spouses at war, nor financial rivals. We were two parents facing a mortal threat to their children.
“I know about Julian,” I replied coldly, turning to Marcus. “Trigger Protocol Omega.”
Marcus nodded and pressed a red button beneath the desk. Immediately, hardened steel shutters rolled down over all the windows on the floor. The doors locked with a heavy metallic thud. The entire floor became an impenetrable fortress.
Blake looked at me, astounded. “You knew? You knew all along?”
“I am no longer the naive little scientist you chased from her home, Blake,” I said, stepping toward him, my voice cutting. “I came back to Chicago to destroy Julian before he could go after my sons. Buying out your competitor? A ruse to force him out into the open and make a mistake.”
A muffled explosion echoed two floors below. The mercenaries were blowing the security doors with C4.
Blake stepped toward me. There was a pain so deep in his eyes, a regret so vast, that it threatened to swallow him. He fell to his knees, right there on my office carpet, ignoring the danger rising toward us.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, his voice broken, tears of despair streaming down his cheeks. “I was blind. I let my best friend poison my mind, and my sister threaten my wife. I destroyed everything. I don’t deserve to be their father. I don’t even deserve for you to look at me. But I beg of you, Emma… let me protect you today. Let me redeem a fraction of my mistakes by giving my life for them if I must.”
The sight of this arrogant billionaire, of the man who had broken my heart, kneeling at my feet, shook me more than I wanted to admit.
Before I could answer, the door to the secret passage cracked open slightly. Leo poked his little head out, followed closely by Hugo and Liam. They looked at this immense man, in tears, on his knees before their mother.
Liam, the gentlest of the three, slipped away from his brothers’ grip. He took small, hesitant steps toward Blake. “Why does the crying man look like you, Leo?” Liam whispered innocently.
Blake slowly raised his head. His eyes met those of his three sons up close for the very first time. The resemblance was striking, cruel, beautiful. His hands shook as he barely dared to breathe, fearing he would scare them.
Another detonation, much closer this time, violently shook the floor. Coffee cups flew into pieces. Assault rifle fire echoed in the stairwells. The countdown had begun.
I grabbed Blake’s arm and yanked him to his feet with a sharp jerk. “You want to protect us?” I asked him, handing him a bulletproof vest pulled from the safe. “Then stand up, Harrington. Julian is coming for blood. It’s time to show him you still have some left in your veins.”
Blake slipped on the vest, his expression shifting completely. Guilt gave way to a cold, murderous fury. The business predator was waking up, but this time, he wasn’t fighting for contracts. He was fighting for his pack.
Suddenly, my phone rang. The name displayed on the screen made me shiver. Julian Crawford.
I put it on speaker. “Good morning, Emma,” Julian’s smooth, cynical voice said through the interference. “Impressive, your security system. But my men will be through that door in exactly three minutes. I have a proposal for you: give me the children, sign over the rights to Novalis, and I’ll let you leave with Blake. A second honeymoon, how does that sound?”
Blake leaned toward the mic, his voice vibrating with a rage from beyond the grave. “Julian.”
A surprised silence greeted his voice on the other end of the line. “Blake? My friend… You’re there too? What a wonderful family reunion.”
“Listen to me carefully, Julian,” Blake murmured with a terrifying calm. “If a single hair on my wife’s or my sons’ heads is touched today… I won’t kill you. I will pay the best doctors in the world to keep you alive for decades, so you can suffer every single day from what I will make you endure.”
Julian burst out laughing. “Empty threats, old brother. In two minutes, I control your empire, and your bastards will be nothing more than a tragic news story.”
He hung up. The sound of circular saws attacking the reinforced door of our floor began to howl, spitting sparks underneath the frame.
I looked at Marcus, then at my children who were huddling together, terrified. Then I looked at Blake. Five years of hatred, misunderstandings, and secrets had led us to this precise moment. We were trapped. But what Julian didn’t know was that the Novalis Energy penthouse hid one final secret… a secret so massive it was going to destroy the Harrington empire this very tonight, right before the eyes of all of Chicago.
I typed a code into my keyboard. The main screen lit up, displaying a countdown: 01:30.
“Hold on tight,” I said, as the floor literally began to give way beneath our feet.
