Chapter 6
The word hung in the bright, golden air, a question that tore the fabric of reality apart for the woman standing in the rumpled apron.
The silence in the grand salon became a physical, suffocating pressure. The dozens of ivory candles flickering in their gilded candelabras seemed to be the only things moving in the entire, luminous space.
Phoebe’s breath caught violently in her throat. Her pulse raced frantically, pounding in her ears like a war drum. She looked from Samuel, clutching her apron in his cream sweater, toward Isaac, standing tall in his navy velvet jacket.
She stared at Isaac’s face. The identical nose, the identical eyes, the identical fair, rosy skin.
The medical monitors beeping in a cold hospital room six years ago flashed through her mind. The sterile smell. The cold, clipped voice of the doctor telling her that one of her beautiful boys had not survived the night. The empty crib. The endless, agonizing years of weeping over a grave that held nothing.
The absolute, unfathomable cruelty of the deception crashed over her like a tidal wave.
Phoebe’s chest heaved rapidly beneath the fitted black fabric of her creased dress. She lifted her head, her expressive eyes filling with hot, devastating tears that blurred the crystal chandeliers above.
She met Gabriel’s dark, commanding gaze.
"My twins," Phoebe whispered, her American accent cracking with profound, world-shattering grief.
She reached out with a trembling hand, her fingers hovering in the empty air between the two boys, desperate to touch them both but paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the moment.
"They said one died," Phoebe sobbed, her voice gaining a desperate, fierce conviction that sliced through the silent room.
The admission hit the room with the devastating force of a physical blow. The absolute, unvarnished truth spoken from the mouth of a broken, grieving mother was a catastrophic verdict.
A collective, quiet gasp rippled through the elite guests standing near the velvet sofas. The sheer, sociopathic malice of stealing a newborn infant and falsely declaring it dead was shocking even to seasoned syndicate members who dealt in violence daily.
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Gabriel Vale stopped breathing. His jaw tightened instantly, the extremely short stubble on his face bristling with suppressed, explosive violence. He realized in a fraction of a second that the orphan he had adopted, the boy he loved as his own, was a stolen child. And he knew exactly who had orchestrated the adoption.
He slowly turned his head, his naturally swept-back hair catching the light. He locked his cold, lethal gaze directly onto Evelyn.
