Chapter 2 - The Truth in the Shadows(Focus: Arriving at Garrett's private safehouse; the medical checkup for Posie; Mave reveals how Garrett's mother threatened her life.)
The SUV tore through the wet streets of Manhattan, heading toward my highly secured penthouse in TriBeCa—a private fortress that even my own mother didn't have the security codes to access. Inside the vehicle, the silence was suffocating, punctuated only by the soft, rhythmic chattering of Mave’s teeth.
I pulled off my wet tuxedo jacket, throwing it onto the floor, and grabbed a thick, heated cashmere blanket from the vehicle's rear compartment. I moved across the cabin, gently wrapping it around Mave and Posie. The little girl didn't cry. She simply buried her face into her mother’s neck, her huge, icy gray eyes tracking my every movement with an unnerving level of intelligence.
"Wesley," I barked into the front partition. "Have Dr. Evans meet us at the penthouse immediately. I want a full medical evaluation on both of them. Now."
"No... no doctors," Mave whispered, her voice incredibly weak as she tried to push the blanket away. "Garrett, we just need to go to a subway station. If your mother finds out we are in the city—"
"My mother doesn't dictate a single breath in this family anymore, Mave," I cut her off, my voice raw with a mixture of burning anger and profound guilt. I leaned forward, my hands resting on my knees, forcing her to look at me. "Three years ago, you walked out of our apartment while I was in Chicago resolving a port dispute. You left your wedding ring on the bathroom counter. No note. No explanation. And now I find out you were carrying my child while hiding in the gutter?"
Mave let out a hollow, bitter laugh that cut deeper than any blade. She pulled the blanket tighter around Posie, her eyes flashing with a sudden, defensive fire.
"Hiding in the gutter? I was trying to stay alive, Garrett!" she cried out, her voice trembling with years of suppressed agony. "You think I wanted to leave you? I loved you more than my own life! But I didn't have a choice!"
"There is always a choice, Mave! I was the head of the Hail family! I could have protected you from anything!"
"Not from your own mother!" Mave screamed back, the truth finally exploding into the space between us.
The SUV swerved slightly as Wesley adjusted his driving, the tension in the vehicle skyrocketing. I stared at her, my breath catching in my throat.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, my voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
"The morning you left for Chicago, Victoria Hail walked into our apartment with three armed men," Mave said, tears streaming freely down her face as she rocked a sleeping Posie in her arms. "She threw a medical folder on the table. It was my fertility report from the clinic—she had bribed the doctors to get it. It showed that my chances of carrying a child to term were less than ten percent due to an underlying genetic condition."
Mave choked on a sob, her hand gently stroking Posie's back. "Your mother told me that a Hail man requires a perfect bloodline to secure the syndicate's future. She said you were already being positioned to marry Coraline Ashford to stop the turf wars. And then... she threatened my family. She told me that if I didn't disappear completely, my father’s logistics company would suffer a 'fatal industrial accident' within forty-eight hours. She had men stationed outside his warehouse, Garrett. I knew what your family was capable of. I knew she would do it."
My blood turned to pure, freezing mercury. I remembered that week three years ago. My mother had been the one to comfort me when Mave disappeared. She had been the one to gently suggest that Mave was simply a fragile, small-town girl who couldn't handle the high-stakes pressure of the mafia lifestyle. She had manipulated my heartbreak to guide me directly into Coraline Ashford’s arms.
"I left that very afternoon," Mave whispered, her voice fading into pure exhaustion. "I changed my name. I moved to a tiny town in Pennsylvania. Two weeks later, I found out the doctors were wrong. The fertility report was a lie your mother had manufactured. I was pregnant, Garrett. I carried our daughter alone in a studio apartment, working two retail jobs just to pay for pre-natal care. I only came back to New York today because the factory I worked at closed down, and I had an interview for a cleaning position at a hotel on Fifth Avenue. I didn't know it was your wedding day. I swear to God, I didn't know."
I reached out, my hands shaking violently as I gently pulled the blanket away from Posie’s face. The little girl stirred, opening her eyes, looking directly at me. I stretched out a single finger, and her tiny, delicate hand reached out, wrapping her small fingers around my thumb. Her grip was tight, desperate, and completely absolute.
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"Victoria Hail," I muttered, the name of my own mother tasting like venom on my tongue. "She took three years of my daughter's life. She took three years of my wife."
I looked up at Mave, my icy gray eyes mirroring the absolute darkness of the vow I was making in my heart. "They will pay for every single tear you cried, Mave. Starting today."
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