Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO STOLE FORTY MINUTES
"Tell me exactly how much of this was a lie."
Adrien Cross stood beneath the streetlights outside Sienna Vale's Manhattan townhouse, holding his phone so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.
Sienna didn't answer.
Behind them, Victor's security vehicles lined the curb.
There had been no intruders.
No broken windows.
No trapped brother.
And somewhere across Manhattan, Adrien's wife was fighting for her life while surgeons tried to save their unborn twins.
"Julian is in Boston," Adrien said. "Marcus confirmed it. So I'll ask you again. What did you do?"
Sienna folded her arms.
"You don't understand."
"Then make me understand."
She glanced toward Victor, who stood near the front entrance speaking to two guards.
"Victor told me someone was planning to steal information from Evelyn's gallery. He said if you didn't leave the hotel, Julian would be blamed."
Adrien stared at her.
"Victor?"
"He said the Constantine people had found the shipping records Julian helped prepare. If those records became public, my brother could go to prison."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because Victor said you'd refuse to help me if Evelyn was there."
Adrien felt something cold settle in his chest.
"So you invented a hostage situation?"
Sienna looked away.
"I thought you'd be gone twenty minutes."
"My wife was on her knees."
"I know."
"She was screaming my name."
Sienna's eyes filled.
"I know, Adrien."
"And you let me walk away."
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Sienna whispered, "You could have stayed."
The words struck harder than anything else she had said.
Because they were true.
Sienna had lied.
Victor might have manipulated them both.
But Adrien had looked directly at his frightened wife and chosen to leave.
Nobody had physically forced him.
He turned toward Victor.
"You're finished."
Victor frowned.
"Boss?"
"Your access to my properties, accounts, and security systems is suspended. Effective immediately."
"Adrien, we've worked together for seventeen years."
"And tonight you sent me chasing a threat that didn't exist."
Victor's expression remained controlled.
"You should focus on your family."
"That's the first honest thing you've said tonight."
Adrien gave one of the guards an instruction to keep Sienna and Victor at the townhouse until the police could take their statements.
Then he drove toward St. Catherine's Hospital.
He didn't call ahead.
He couldn't bear to ask whether Evelyn was still alive.
At the hospital, Marcus stood outside the operating room with dried blood on the sleeve of his tuxedo.
Adrien stopped.
"Is she alive?"
Marcus looked at him.
For one terrible second, he said nothing.
Then he nodded.
"She's alive. But they're still working on her."
Adrien bent forward, pressing his palms against his knees.
"And the babies?"
"Your daughter was delivered first. She's breathing on her own."
Adrien closed his eyes.
"Your son needed breathing support. He's in the neonatal intensive care unit."
Both children were alive.
His children.
A daughter and a son.
And he had missed their first breaths.
Dr. Rebecca Lawson emerged twenty minutes later.
She looked exhausted.
"Your wife experienced severe complications associated with preeclampsia, followed by significant bleeding during surgery. We've controlled the bleeding, but she's still critically ill."
"Can I see her?"
"When she's transferred to intensive care."
Adrien swallowed.
"Did she say anything?"
The doctor's face softened.
"Before surgery, she asked us not to let her babies feel alone."
Adrien turned away.
He remembered Evelyn folding tiny yellow blankets in their nursery.
She had insisted on preparing two identical baskets because she didn't want either child to have less than the other.
He had teased her for worrying about things newborns couldn't understand.
Now he would have given away every building he owned to hear her laugh at him again.
Near midnight, Marcus approached with a tablet.
"Boss, there's something else."
Adrien barely looked up.
"Unless it's about Evelyn, it can wait."
"It is about Evelyn."
Marcus showed him security footage from the Grand Imperial Hotel.
The recording displayed a service corridor shortly after Evelyn had been taken away.
A man in a dark suit entered the private coat-check room.
Victor.
He approached the numbered lockers, opened one with a master key, and removed Evelyn's silver evening bag.
Adrien recognized it immediately.
She had carried it to the gala because it matched her maternity gown.
Victor opened the bag.
Then he removed a blue paper envelope.
The camera captured the writing across its front.
GABRIEL BELL — PIER 14 — ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS.
Adrien stared.
Gabriel Bell was Evelyn's father.
A photographer who had died in a waterfront fire nine years earlier.
A fire connected to the Constantine organization.
"Why would Victor want Evelyn's father's photographs?"
Marcus hesitated.
"Because, boss, I've seen one of them."
Adrien looked up.
Marcus turned the tablet toward him again.
The final frame showed Victor holding a photograph beneath the corridor lights.
Two men stood outside a burning warehouse.
One was a known Constantine associate.
May you like
The other was Adrien Cross.
And the timestamp on the photograph was from the night Evelyn's father died.
