Chapter 5 - The Child in the Sanctuary
The breath left my lungs in a sharp, painful rush.
The lady from the picture frame in his briefcase.
That meant Nathaniel carried a photograph of me here—not to remember a loving home, but as a reference point, a profile of the wife he had left behind in Chicago while he played father in a Nantucket hotel room.
I closed the door softly behind me, clicking the latch just enough to keep the hallway out. I knelt down slowly, lowering myself to eye level with the little girl so I wouldn't loom over her like a threat. My hands were trembling, but I forced my voice to remain steady, soft, coating every syllable in as much gentleness as I could muster.
“Hi,” I said, offering a small, fragile smile. “I’m Ava.”
The little girl tilted her head, her dark curls bouncing against her shoulders. She looked so much like the photographs of my husband’s late mother that I felt a cold chill run down my spine. The bone structure, the shape of the jaw, the sharp, intelligent spark in the eyes—she wasn't just Julian Sterling’s niece. There was Cross blood in her veins, too.
“I know who you are,” the girl said quietly, sliding back against the pillows. “Uncle Nate says you make paintings with lots of black and gold. He says you’re an artist.”
Uncle Nate.
The title hit me harder than “Daddy” had. If he was her uncle, why did she call him Daddy? And why had Nathaniel hidden her away from me, from the world, from the life we had supposedly built together?
“Did he tell you anything else about me?” I asked, keeping my tone carefully measured, kneeling on the floral carpet just a few feet away from her bed.
“He said you have a big heart, but you live in a glass house,” the girl replied with the blunt, honest innocence only children possess. “He said he has to keep us apart so the bad men don't find us.”
“The bad men,” I repeated bitterly. In Nathaniel’s vocabulary, bad men usually meant anyone who didn't bow to his shipping empire—or rivals like Julian Sterling.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” I asked gently, though I already knew the answer.
“Elena,” she whispered. “Elena Vance.”
The name settled heavily in the small, warm room. Vance. The mortal enemy of Cross Meridian Holdings. Nathaniel had spent millions trying to crush the Sterling-Vance shipping lines over the last decade, yet here he was, harboring his enemy’s flesh and blood, raising her in secret behind a locked hotel door.
Why?
Was it out of some twisted sense of family loyalty? Or was Elena a pawn in a much larger, darker game of corporate chess?
Before I could ask her another question, a sharp, metallic sound echoed from the bathroom attached to the bedroom.
The sound of a sliding bolt being drawn back.
My blood ran cold. Nathaniel had said he wouldn't be back before dinner. He had said he was meeting port authorities in Boston.
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“Elena,” I whispered, rising quickly to my feet, my hand dropping into my bag to grip the heavy metal frame of my sketch pad like a weapon. “Who else is in this room?”
Before the little girl could answer, the bathroom door swung open, and a tall woman in a crisp gray nurse’s uniform stepped out into the bedroom, holding a tray of empty teacups. She froze when she saw me standing by the bed, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated terror.
