“You lied to me,” I said, my voice dangerously calm, though every nerve ending in my body was vibrating with white-hot fury. “You lied about Clara. You lied about where this child came from. You lied about every single foundation this marriage was built on.”
Eric stepped into the room, gently placing the bottle on a side table, and raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “I didn't lie about loving you, Maya. Never that. But the truth... the truth was a loaded gun pointed directly at your head.”
“Try me,” I challenged, standing up from the leather chair and stepping around the desk to face him eye-to-eye. “Tell me how my sister—who supposedly died four years ago in the Alps—managed to leave her child in your custody, and why you hid it from me while I was grieving a miscarriage you knew damn well I couldn't fix!”
Eric flinched as if I had struck him physically. He dragged a hand through his damp hair, closing his eyes for a long, agonizing moment before he began to speak.
“Clara didn't die in the Alps, Maya,” Eric said quietly. “That was a cover story engineered by my biological father’s corporate security team. Your sister got mixed up with the same pharmaceutical conglomerate that destroyed my family years ago. She discovered they were weaponizing genetic research programs—programs funded by my father’s estate. When she tried to expose them, they hunted her.”
I stared at him, my mind spinning into freefall. “Hunted her? Are you insane? Clara was an art history graduate student!”
“Clara was a brilliant undercover financial auditor who infiltrated my father’s inner circle to find out what happened to me when I was put into foster care,” Eric corrected, his voice dropping to a harsh, urgent whisper. “She found out the truth. She found out my father’s empire was built on human experimentation. And when she got pregnant with that little boy upstairs... she realized her life was forfeit.”
He walked toward me, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
“Four days ago, a secure courier dropped that baby off at our private hangar in San Diego with a blood-stained letter written in Clara’s handwriting. She told me she was running out of time, that assassins from the syndicate were closing in, and that the only man on earth she trusted to keep her son alive was me.”
The room grew so quiet I could hear the distant, rhythmic pounding of the ocean waves against the cliffs outside.
“If she’s running,” I whispered, my voice trembling, “where is she now, Eric?”
Eric looked away, unable to meet my eyes. “We don't know, Maya. The security team tracking her last known location in Zurich went dark forty-eight hours ago. As far as the corporate syndicate knows, that baby is the final loose end they need to eliminate to secure a multi-billion-dollar patent portfolio.”
A cold wave of dread washed over me. The grief of losing my sister, which I had mourned for four long years, shattered into a violent, protective rage. She wasn't dead. She was out there somewhere, fighting for her life. And her son—my flesh and blood—was sitting upstairs in our home, acting as bait for international killers.
“We aren't hiding anymore,” I said, my voice hardening into steel. “If they want this baby, they have to go through both of us.”
Before Eric could answer, the security system on his desk terminal flashed a blinding, violent red.
Warning: Perimeter Breach. Sector Four: Main Gate.
Across the monitor screens, the feed from our front security cameras flickered to life. Three unmarked black SUVs had just smashed through our iron gates, idling in the courtyard. Armed men in tactical gear were pouring out, weapons drawn, marching directly toward our front door.