Chapter 4
Saskia wiped a trembling hand across her forehead, realizing that the gentle warmth of the study was doing nothing to mask the cold sweat breaking out across her fair skin. She forced herself to stop pacing and planted her feet, trying to project the sophisticated authority she had wielded for years as the shelter director.
“I am sweating because I am being interrogated like a common criminal by the man I love,” Saskia said, her voice dropping into a register of manufactured hurt. “I have dedicated my entire life to placing abandoned children into loving homes. I brought you an heir because I wanted our family to be complete before the wedding. I didn't want the complications of a pregnancy interfering with your syndicate operations.”
Dorian did not blink. His posture remained perfectly composed, a predator studying wounded prey. “Did you truly believe my empire required you to source an heir from the local riverbanks? Have I ever expressed an inability to sire my own children?”
Saskia’s breath hitched. She stepped closer to the desk, her diamond earrings shaking. “Dorian, please. You know the rival families have been whispering. An unmarried boss without a successor is a vulnerability. I solved that vulnerability for you! I found a boy with no ties, no messy background, and no greedy relatives to extort you. I gave you a blank slate!”
Flora let out a sound of pure disgust. “He is not a blank slate! He is a human being! He is my son!” She dropped to her knees, bringing herself to eye level with Ellis. The boy’s formal dinner jacket felt stiff and unnatural compared to the soft sweaters she used to buy for him. She reached out, gently brushing his thick hair behind his left ear.
There, perfectly visible under the bright, clear lighting of the study, was a distinct, crescent-shaped birthmark on his rosy skin.
Flora looked up at Dorian, tears streaming down her face. “Please. Look at him. Ask him. He knows his own name. He knows who I am.”
Dorian shifted his cold gaze to the seven-year-old boy. “Is your name truly Ellis, or is that a fiction invented by the woman in the satin dress?”
Ellis looked at the mafia boss. Despite Dorian’s intimidating presence, the boy sensed that the man asking the questions was the only one who could protect them from Saskia. “My name is Ellis Bennett,” the boy said, his American accent clear and precise. “We lived on 4th Street. We had a yellow door.”
Dorian looked back at Saskia. The silence stretched again, thick and heavy. “How did a boy abandoned at a fire station by a drug addict come to memorize the address of my housemaid, Saskia?”
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Saskia’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. The pristine white lies she had constructed were crumbling into dust. She looked at Flora with a gaze of unadulterated hatred, realizing that the one variable she could not control—the maid’s employment at this specific mansion—had destroyed her entire grand design.
“Will you answer the boy’s accusation, or shall we assume your silence is a confession of kidnapping?” Dorian asked softly.
