Chapter 2 - The Midnight Ambush
By dawn, the cold wind blowing off Lake Michigan carried a heavy, foreboding mist over the city. I arrived at the commercial kitchen on Damen Avenue at 5:00 AM, my breath pluming in the gray light. My delivery vans were already lined up, but something was terribly wrong.
Three black SUVs blocked the loading bay. Two men in dark suits stood by the main doors, preventing my kitchen supervisor, Maria, from rolling out the breakfast crates.
“Hannah!” Maria shouted through the drizzle, her face pale. “These men won’t let us load the trucks! They claim our municipal food permits are under formal review!”
My blood turned to pure acid. I marched straight past the gate, my work boots splashing through the puddles. “Get out of my way,” I snapped at the largest guard. “This is private commercial property.”
“Miss Miller,” a deep, gravelly voice echoed from behind the open back door of the lead SUV.
Sebastian stepped into the morning rain. He wore a charcoal wool coat over a crisp tailored suit, looking every inch the ruthless venture capitalist who owned half the downtown skyline. But his dark eyes—the identical storm-gray eyes that stared back at me every morning from my son Lucas’s face—were bloodshot and hollow.
“Tell your guards to step down, Sebastian,” I said, refusing to back down an inch. “I have four hundred preschool breakfasts waiting to leave this dock. If these meals are late, I violate my city contract.”
“They aren't going anywhere until we talk,” Sebastian replied, his jaw flexing tight. “I stayed outside your apartment building until 3:00 AM. You didn't come to the window.”
“Because I owe you nothing! You chose your life five years ago!”
“I didn't choose this!” he roared, his voice cracking with a raw, thunderous agony that startled his own security guards. “I was told my babies died in a delivery room hemorrhage! I was handed fake death certificates with hospital stamps! I sat in an empty nursery for six months drinking myself to death while my mother told me you fled to Europe because you couldn't stand the sight of me!”
A chilling silence fell over the wet asphalt. Maria gasped behind me.
I looked at him, searching for the deceit, searching for the arrogant billionaire who let his family trample over my dignity. But all I saw was a shattered man coming face-to-face with an impossible truth.
“Your mother lied,” I said quietly, the cold rain dripping from my eyelashes. “And your sweet little fiancée Olivia wrote the script.”
Sebastian took three rapid strides toward me, closing the distance until I could smell the familiar cedarwood cologne I had once buried my face in every night. “Prove it,” he whispered, his hands trembling visibly at his sides. “Prove to me that Olivia had anything to do with this. She has been by my side, comforting me through the worst grief of my life!”
“Call off your dogs and let my trucks drive,” I commanded. “Or I will release the unedited audio to the Chicago Tribune before your markets open at nine.”
Sebastian’s eyes flickered with shock. Without breaking gaze with me, he lifted two fingers and signaled the men. “Move the vehicles. Let the trucks out.”
The guards scrambled. The black SUVs cleared the bay, and Maria hurried the drivers inside, engines roaring to life.
May you like
Sebastian stood alone in the drizzle, looking down at me as if the ground beneath his feet was dissolving. “Hannah... I’m ordering a DNA test. You have to let me do it. If those three children belong to me, not a single soul on this earth will keep me from them.”
“A DNA swab requires a court order, Mr. Carter,” I replied, stepping back into the warmth of my kitchen door. “And when you see what I bring to that courtroom, you’ll wish you had never walked into that restaurant.”
