Chapter 1 - THE MAN WHO STOPPED BREATHING
When my daughter smiled at the blood on Stellan Cross’s hand, Chicago’s most dangerous man went completely white.
Not pale.
Not surprised.
White.
Like the dead had just reached out and touched him.
Fern had been screaming for almost forty minutes in the marble service hallway of Cross Manor, her tiny lungs turning every breath into a fight.
“Shh, baby. Please. Please, sweetheart.”
I bounced her against my chest while sweat crawled down my spine beneath my maid’s uniform.
This was exactly how you got fired from a house like this.
Mrs. Thornbury had made the rules clear on my first morning.
Keep your eyes down.
Don’t ask questions.
Never enter the west wing.
And if Mr. Cross walks into a room, make yourself invisible.
Unfortunately, invisibility didn’t pay rent.
My sitter had canceled at five in the morning. My landlord had taped a FINAL NOTICE to my apartment door. Fern’s prescription had four doses left, and the pharmacy wanted money I didn’t have.
So I had done the dumbest thing possible.
I brought my eleven-month-old daughter to work.
I hid her stroller in the laundry room and prayed she would sleep through my shift.
She lasted twenty-three minutes.
Then footsteps sounded behind me.
Not hurried.
Not heavy.
Just slow enough to make everyone in the house afraid.
I turned.
Stellan Cross stood at the end of the hallway.
Black suit.
Black tie.
Steel-gray eyes.
A pale scar ran from his left temple to the edge of his jaw.
And his right hand was bleeding.
Fresh blood covered two knuckles.
My stomach dropped.
“Oh, God.”
His eyes found me.
Then Fern.
Then me again.
“You.”
His voice was quiet.
That was worse than shouting.
“Mr. Cross, I’m sorry.”
I started talking too fast.
“My babysitter canceled, and I called everyone, and I swear she wasn’t supposed to be upstairs. I can leave right now. I’ll come back tonight. I’ll work double. Please don’t fire me.”
“Stop talking.”
I stopped.
Fern did not.
She screamed harder.
Stellan walked toward us.
Every survival instinct I had told me to back away.
I couldn’t.
Fern was in my arms.
He stopped two feet from me.
“How old?”
“Eleven months.”
His eyes remained on her.
“She small.”
“She was born early.”
“How early?”
“Twenty-nine weeks.”
Something changed in his face.
It disappeared so fast I almost imagined it.
Fern’s cry broke into a rough cough.
Stellan lifted his bloody hand.
I jerked back.
“Please don’t touch her.”
His eyes snapped to mine.
For one terrible second, I thought I had just insulted a man who supposedly owned half the cops in Chicago and frightened the other half.
Then he said, “Give her to me.”
“What?”
“Your daughter.”
“No.”
His eyebrow moved.
It was the first smart thing I had done all morning and possibly the last.
“She doesn’t like strangers,” I said. “She’ll scream.”
Fern suddenly stopped crying.
Silence hit the hallway.
I looked down.
She wasn’t looking at me.
She was looking at him.
At Stellan.
Her wet blue eyes studied his scar.
Then Fern smiled.
My heart stopped.
“No,” I whispered.
Fern had never smiled at a stranger.
Not nurses.
Not neighbors.
Not even my old babysitter for the first two weeks.
But now she leaned out of my arms.
Toward him.
Both hands reaching.
Stellan looked almost angry.
Not at her.
At himself.
“Give her to me,” he said again.
This time, quieter.
I don’t know why I obeyed.
Fear, maybe.
Or the strange look on Fern’s face.
I transferred her carefully.
Stellan Cross took my daughter like a man who had handled weapons his entire life and had never once been trusted with something breakable.
His injured hand hovered above her back.
Fern grabbed his tie.
Then she laid her cheek against his chest.
And sighed.
Stellan froze.
His breathing stopped.
Actually stopped.
“Mr. Cross?”
He didn’t answer.
Fern curled one tiny fist around his collar.
I watched the most feared man in Chicago tremble.
Barely.
Less than an inch.
But I saw it.
“She’s never done that,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened.
Then his eyes lifted to mine.
“Follow me.”
“Where?”
His expression turned cold again.
“My office.”
Every ugly rumor I had ever heard about Stellan Cross ran through my head.
Men who disappeared.
Companies that collapsed overnight.
A prosecutor who suddenly moved to Arizona.
A body pulled from Lake Michigan with no identification.
“I really need to get back to work.”
He started walking away.
With my baby.
I followed immediately.
His office had floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake.
Black shelves.
Locked cabinets.
A glass case displaying three handguns and a knife.
Photographs facedown on the desk.
Fern was asleep before he sat.
That made no sense.
She barely slept for me.
He lowered himself into the chair, still holding her.
“Sit.”
I sat.
“Explain why you brought her.”
So I told him.
The sitter.
The rent.
The hospital bills.
The medication.
I left out the parts that hurt too much.
Sleeping in a chair beside Fern because lying down made it harder to hear if she stopped breathing.
Eating crackers for dinner so I could buy formula.
Selling my mother’s necklace.
Stellan listened without interrupting.
Then he asked, “Where is her father?”
My fingers tightened around my skirt.
“Gone.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
His gaze sharpened.
Fern shifted in his arms.
He instantly looked down.
The change in him terrified me more than the blood on his hand.
“Who was he?”
I stood.
“I should go.”
“Selene.”
My entire body locked.
No one in this house called me Selene.
To the staff, I was Miss Vale.
To Mrs. Thornbury, I was girl.
I stared at him.
“How do you know my name?”
He leaned back slowly.
Gray eyes.
That scar.
That voice.
Something old moved inside my memory.
Rain against hotel windows.
A black mask.
A stranger’s hands shaking while I cleaned blood from his shoulder.
A man who had told me his name was Adrian.
A man who had kissed me like morning might never come.
A man who disappeared before sunrise.
He looked at Fern.
Then at me.
And said, “You really don’t remember me?”
My knees weakened.
“No.”
His face hardened.
“I remember you.”
“Stop.”
“And I remember that night.”
“No.”
He looked at the sleeping child against his chest.
Then spoke the words that split my life in half.
May you like
“I think your daughter is mine.”
And somewhere downstairs, a gunshot exploded through the mansion.
