Chapter 5 - The Midnight Results
The digital clock on the minimalist marble fireplace clicked over to 4:18 AM.
The city of Chicago lay blanketed beneath a heavy autumn fog, the streetlights below glowing like distant amber embers.
Inside the penthouse, neither adult had slept a single second.
Owen was finally resting peacefully in the oversized designer crib, wrapped in a fresh cotton blanket that Mallerie had insisted on washing herself with hypoallergenic soap from the kitchen.
Mallerie sat on the floor beside the wooden slats of the crib, her back resting against the wall, her eyes never leaving the boy’s sleeping face.
Gideon stood ten feet away by the wet bar, a tumbler of aged scotch sitting untouched on the black granite counter.
He had removed his tie and unbuttoned his collar, the faint line of dark ink on his wrist fully visible now—a black crest of a coiled viper.
“You should sit on the sofa,” Gideon said softly, breaking the hours-long silence.
“The marble is cold.”
“I’m fine right here,” Mallerie replied, not looking at him.
“I spent ten months thinking he was cold in the ground.
I’m not leaving his side.”
Gideon bowed his head, staring at the floor.
“I loved him from the second Vance put him in my arms,” Gideon whispered, the admission sounding raw, almost painful coming from his lips.
“When Helena died, I thought my life was over.
I was ready to hand the syndicate to my lieutenants and walk into the lake.
Then this tiny, fragile boy looked up at me with those gray eyes.”
Mallerie looked up, her expression a mix of maternal sorrow and lingering bitterness.
“He has my father’s eyes,” she said softly.
“My father was a sailor on the Great Lakes.
He drowned when I was fourteen.
Owen has his exact coloring.”
Gideon swallowed hard, nodding slowly.
“Every night when Owen had colic, I walked the halls with him until three in the morning.
He hated the formula the private nurses gave him.
He would scream until his face turned purple unless I held him against my left shoulder and hummed an old Italian hymn my grandmother taught me.”
Mallerie felt a strange, conflicting warmth bloom in her chest.
She had prepared herself to hate Gideon Vale.
She had expected an arrogant, cold-blooded monster who viewed a child as an accessory to power.
Instead, she was looking at a grieving father who had poured every ounce of his humanity into keeping her stolen baby alive.
“Why didn’t you hire ten nannies to do that?” she asked quietly.
“Because he was my son,” Gideon replied instantly, his gray eyes flashing with fierce pride.
“A man does not outsource the care of his blood to paid help.
I bathed him.
I changed him.
I checked his breathing five times every night.”
Before Mallerie could respond, the private elevator chimed.
The heavy brass doors parted, and Dr.
Julian Mercer stepped out into the foyer, holding a manila folder sealed with red tamper-evident tape.
Mercer’s face was pale, his eyes wide with professional exhaustion and nervous reverence.
Gideon straightened his posture, instantly slipping back into the authoritative mask of the mob boss.
“Do you have the sequencing, Julian?”
“I ran it three separate times through the high-density PCR array,” Mercer said, his hands trembling as he broke the wax seal on the envelope.
Mallerie scrambled to her feet, her heart hammering violently against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Mercer pulled out two sheets of analytical genetic data, adjusting his reading glasses.
“The child known as Owen Vale shares a 99.998% maternal genetic match with Mallerie Reed,” Mercer announced, his voice echoing in the vast living room.
“Statistically and biologically, there is zero margin of error.
Mallerie Reed is the biological mother of the child.”
A strangled, breathless sob tore from Mallerie’s throat.
She covered her mouth with both hands, sinking back against the wall as ten months of suffocating grief, doubt, and agony finally evaporated into the air.
He was hers.
Her boy hadn’t died in an incubator.
Her boy was sleeping three feet away, alive, breathing, and safe.
Gideon stood completely motionless, absorbing the scientific finality of the words.
He slowly closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling in one deep, ragged breath.
“And Helena?” Gideon asked, his voice barely audible.
“Zero genetic overlap with the late Helena Vale,” Mercer confirmed gently.
“The child is entirely the product of Mallerie Reed and an unidentified paternal lineage.”
“That lineage doesn’t matter,” Mallerie choked out, wiping tears from her cheeks.
“The father walked out the second the pregnancy test turned positive.
Owen is mine.
Only mine.”
Gideon walked slowly over to the crib.
He looked down at the sleeping child, watching Owen’s tiny chest rise and fall beneath the cotton blanket.
His fingers hovered over the boy’s soft cheek, trembling slightly before he pulled his hand back, as if he no longer had the right to touch the boy he had raised.
“Marcus will prepare the paperwork,” Gideon said quietly, his back turned to Mallerie.
“Full legal custody will be restored to you.
I will arrange for an apartment in a safe district, an armed security detail for six months, and a trust fund of fifty million dollars in Owen’s name so you never have to work another day in your life.”
Mallerie froze, staring at Gideon’s rigid back.
“You’re just...
giving him back?”
Gideon turned around, his eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears, looking more vulnerable than any billionaire kingpin had a right to look.
“You are his mother, Mallerie.
You were robbed of him by a coward in my name.
I am a monster in many ways, but I will not steal a child from a mother who loves him.”
He turned toward the elevator, his shoulders heavy with defeat.
“Marcus will escort you wherever you wish to go.”
At that exact moment, Owen stirred in the crib.
The baby opened his wide, sleepy gray eyes, looked past Mallerie, and locked onto Gideon’s retreating figure.
Owen let out a sharp, pitiful whimper.
He pushed himself up onto his little knees, reaching both hands through the wooden bars of the crib directly toward Gideon.
“Da!” the baby squeaked, the tiny syllable ringing clear as a bell through the silent penthouse.
“Da-da!”
May you like
Gideon stopped dead in his tracks, his entire body shuddering as if struck by lightning.
Mallerie looked at the baby, then at the broken man standing in the doorway, and realized with terrifying clarity that this nightmare was far from over.
