Chapter 4 - Three Little Miracles
The shade of the grand stone archway over the Art Institute entrance offered a brief respite from the glaring Chicago sun, but the air between us felt thick enough to suffocate.
"You didn't tell me," I said, my voice barely audible over the hum of the city. I took a slow step forward, keeping my hands open and visible, mindful of the way Maya’s body tensed like a cornered animal protecting her young.
"Tell you what?" she fired back, her voice cracking with a mix of hysteria and defensive rage. "That I was pregnant when you threw me out into the street like a piece of trash? Or that I spent the first year of their lives hiding in a cramped studio apartment in Evanston, terrified that one of your grandfather's enforcers would find us and use my babies as leverage in a turf war?"
"Maya, look at me," I pleaded, ignoring the sharp sting of her words because I knew I deserved every single syllable. I knelt down slowly, bringing myself level with the stroller.
The three toddlers shrank back slightly, clutching the fabric of their matching striped shirts.
"Hi," I murmured, my voice softening in a way I didn't know was possible for an heir to the Vale empire. I looked at the little girl—the one who had looked at me first in the park. "What's your name?"
She didn't answer. She just stared at me with those cold, sharp, unmistakable gray eyes.
"Her name is Elena," Maya said tightly, stepping protectively between me and the stroller, though her legs were shaking so hard she had to grip the metal frame for balance. "The boy on the left is Leo. And the middle one is Toby. They're three years old. They were born six months after you told me I was a liability."
The name hit me like a physical blow. Leo. She had named our son after the cousin she knew I despised—the one who represented the brutal, unyielding nature of the Vale family. Was it a coincidence, or a deliberate, bitter reminder of what I had been?
"Maya," I said, looking up from the children to meet her tear-stained eyes. "When I made you leave... I did it because I thought—"
"I don't care what you thought, Adrian," she interrupted, her voice dropping into a harsh, trembling whisper. "You made your choice clear. You chose your empire, your family’s safety, and your high-society life. You wanted a clean break from the underworld. Well, congratulations. You got it. We are clean. We don't want your money, we don't want your protection, and we certainly don't want a man who walks around the city with a senator's daughter on his arm flashing a five-carat diamond."
I flinched. She had seen us.
"That's over," I said immediately. "Camille and I... the wedding is canceled."
Maya let out a dry, humorless laugh that held no joy at all. "Oh, please. Don't insult my intelligence, Adrian. Men like you don't cancel multi-million-dollar dynasties because of a coincidence in a park. Go back to your fiancée. Go play mafia boss in your glass towers. Just leave us alone."
She turned the stroller around with a violent jerk, preparing to push past me down the steps.
Before she could take a step, a small hand reached out from the stroller.
It was Toby, the little boy who loved lining up cars. He didn't grab Maya’s skirt. Instead, his tiny fingers reached out and gently poked my sleeve, right where the fabric had torn against the taxi cab.
"Mister," Toby said, his voice small, high-pitched, and carrying the exact cadence of my own speech patterns. "Your coat is broken."
My throat tightened so hard I couldn't swallow. I reached out, my large, calloused fingers trembling as I lightly brushed my knuckles against his tiny, soft hand. He didn't pull away. He just looked up at me with those gray-green eyes, searching my face with an innate, unexplainable curiosity.
May you like
Maya stopped dead in her tracks. A single tear broke free from her lashes, tracking a clean path down her dusty cheek.
"You can't run from me anymore, Maya," I said softly, standing up slowly, my gaze fixed entirely on her. "You have my face. You have my blood. And whether you like it or not... you and these children belong to me."
