Chapter 6 - The Unbroken Circle
I shoved Claire to the floor, where Killian’s tactical operators immediately pinned her shoulders and snapped heavy steel cuffs around her wrists.
Megan rushed past them, dropping to her knees beside the medical carrier.
With shaking, bloody fingers, Megan pulled back the pink fleece blanket.
Inside, an eight-month-old infant girl with delicate features, a crown of bright golden curls, and breathtaking silver-gray eyes looked up at her mother.
Clara didn't cry. She reached out a tiny, soft hand, her fingers brushing against Megan’s wet cheek, cooing with a sweet, musical sound that filled the grand hallway like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.
Megan let out a ragged, primal wail of joy that made my hardened tactical soldiers lower their heads in reverent silence.
She scooped Clara out of the carrier, pressing the baby girl against her chest, right beside Noah and Lucas who were cooing in their front wrap.
For the first time in eight months, all three of my children were breathing against their mother’s heart.
A suffocating, agonizing lump closed my throat.
I sank down onto the carpet beside them, resting my hand over Megan’s trembling shoulder, unable to hold back the tears that washed away my arrogance, my pride, and the poisonous blindness that had nearly destroyed everything I loved.
"Clara..." I whispered, touching the baby’s tiny forehead with the tip of my trembling finger.
Clara turned her silver eyes toward me, her tiny fingers reaching out to wrap around my thumb, just like her brother had done in the car.
Claire sat pinned against the wall twenty feet away, her silk gown stained with dust, sobbing with bitter, humiliated rage.
"You're ruined, Rowan!" Claire screamed through her tears. "My father sits on the state judiciary committee! He will call the governor! You will never walk these streets as a free man!"
I stood up slowly, stepping over to where she lay pinned under my soldier’s boot.
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I reached into my pocket, pulled out the crumpled, mud-stained twenty-dollar bill she had thrown into the dirt that afternoon, and let it flutter down onto her tear-stained face.
"Keep it, Claire," I said, my voice cold as absolute zero. "You're going to need it to buy soap in the women's federal penitentiary in Memphis."
