Chapter 4 - The West Wing Interrogation
The guest suite on the third floor was larger than my entire Brooklyn apartment, featuring a massive four-poster bed, velvet drapes, and a marble fireplace where a fire had already been magically kindled by invisible staff.
Yet, despite the luxury, it was a prison.
Two guards stood on either side of the heavy mahogany door outside, and the windows were reinforced with bulletproof glass that didn't budge an inch when I tried to force them open.
Leah was currently sitting on the edge of the plush velvet sofa, clutching her worn velvet bunny in one hand while her other hand was securely locked around my index finger.
She refused to let go.
Every time I tried to gently pry my finger loose to walk across the room, her lower lip would quiver, and a soft, wounded whimpering sound would bubble up in her throat, forcing me right back to her side.
"It's okay, sweetheart," I murmured softly, stroking her dark curls, marveling at how soft they were, how hauntingly familiar the texture felt against my skin, like a ghost memory I had suppressed for two agonizing years. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
The heavy door clicked open, and Damian walked into the room, his suit jacket discarded, his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the sharp, clean lines of his throat and a jagged white scar running along his collarbone.
He didn't look like a ruthless monster in that moment; he looked tired, haunted by the same ghosts that had been keeping me awake for twenty-four months.
"Vance isn't answering his private line," Damian said without preamble, tossing his encrypted satellite phone onto the coffee table with a dull thud. "His clinic in Zurich is reporting that he took an 'emergency leave of absence' three hours ago. Coincidence? I think not."
I looked up from the sofa, my heart sinking. "He's running."
"He's hiding," Damian corrected, walking over to the fireplace and resting his forearm against the stone mantel, staring down into the flickering flames. "Which means there is a paper trail, or a digital trail, that leads straight back to whatever happened in that delivery room two years ago."
"You still think I'm part of it," I stated, not as a question, but as a bitter fact.
Damian turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an unreadable expression. "I don't know what to think, Clara. For two years, I believed my child was dead. I built an empire on grief and vengeance. And then tonight, you walk into my private dining room with a tray of water, and my mute daughter—who hasn't spoken a single word since she was pulled out of that Swiss hellhole—looks at you and screams 'Mama'."
He pushed off the mantel and took two slow steps toward the sofa, stopping just a few feet away.
"Tell me how that is mathematically, biologically, or logically possible without someone orchestrating it," he challenged softly.
"I don't know!" I cried out, frustration and exhaustion finally breaking my defenses. Tears spilled over my eyelashes, hot and fast. "Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I woke up this morning planning to get kidnapped by a mafia boss and locked in a Westchester mansion? I thought my baby died! I spent two years crying myself to sleep, wondering what she would have looked like, wondering if she had my eyes, wondering if she was warm, or if she was scared!"
My voice cracked, breaking into a ragged sob as I pulled my knees up to my chest, letting go of Leah's hand for just a second to bury my face in my palms.
"And now you're telling me she might be right here... sitting ten inches away from me... while you treat me like a criminal..."
A heavy, suffocating silence descended over the room.
For a long moment, the only sound was the crackling of the logs in the fireplace and Leah's soft, rhythmic breathing.
Then, I felt a heavy, warm weight settle onto the sofa beside me.
A large, calloused hand—the hand that held the fate of the underworld—gently touched my shoulder.
The contact was so foreign, so shockingly gentle coming from Damian Caruso, that I flinched.
"Clara," he said, his voice stripped of all its usual menace, sounding rough and raw. "Look at me."
I slowly lowered my hands, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the back of my wrist, and looked up into his dark, searching eyes.
"If DNA proves what my gut is screaming at me right now," Damian whispered, his gaze dropping briefly to Leah before returning to my face, "if you are who I think you might be..."
May you like
He paused, his jaw tightening as a fierce, protective light ignited in his eyes.
"Then whoever stole our child from that clinic in Zurich is going to wish they had never been born."
