"When the ruthless Mafia boss unboxed his birthday gifts, he never expected to find his own starving, barefoot grandson freezing in the snow—and the bloody revenge that followed." / Chapter 42 / 60

Chapter 42 - Six Years StolenClaire had not slept when the sun rose over Manhattan.

She sat inside a protected federal interview room, staring at a sealed medical file Agent Reyes had placed before her.

Dominic was being questioned separately. Julian had survived surgery and remained under armed guard. The Sovereign Council's American leadership had been dismantled, but its European assets remained dangerously active.

Reyes opened the folder.

"Claire, there is something important about your brother's history."

Claire looked up.

"The intelligence dossier Dominic received says you and your brother were born twenty-four years ago."

"I know. Dominic told me."

"That date is false."

Reyes slid a second document across the table.

It was an authenticated birth record from a private clinic in Switzerland.

Two babies.

One girl.

One boy.

Both born thirty years earlier.

Claire recognized her mother's name immediately.

Evelyn Shaw.

Her fingers began trembling.

"Why change our ages?"

"Because the Council wanted to erase the first six years of your lives. Your brother wasn't taken at birth, Claire. He was taken when you were both six."

A strange sensation moved through Claire's chest.

An image flashed across her mind.

A garden.

A little boy laughing beside a white fountain.

Two children holding matching wooden horses.

And a woman's voice calling from somewhere behind them.

Claire! Elias! Come inside!

Claire pressed a hand against her mouth.

"I remember him."

Reyes leaned forward.

"Tell me."

"There was a boy. I always thought he was a dream."

Claire closed her eyes.

"He had a scar beside his eyebrow. He fell trying to climb a garden wall."

Reyes went still.

Then she turned another photograph toward Claire.

A recent surveillance image of Elias Vance.

Beside his left eyebrow lay a thin, pale scar.

Claire began to cry.

Not because she was frightened.

Because somewhere inside her, a little girl had been waiting twenty-four years for the boy who had disappeared from her garden.

Reyes waited until Claire could breathe again.

"Your mother tried to recover him. We found records of legal petitions, private investigators, and intercepted correspondence. Every request was buried by the Sovereign Council."

"Did she know where he was?"

"Toward the end, yes. She was preparing to expose the organization."

"Then why didn't she?"

Reyes hesitated.

"Because someone close to her betrayed the plan."

Claire already suspected the answer.

"Julian."

Reyes nodded.

Claire stared down at the photograph.

Her biological father hadn't merely abandoned her.

He had stolen one child, buried the memory of the other, and handed both their futures to an empire built on fear.

Before Claire could speak again, an agent knocked on the door.