Chapter 16
Our Penthouse
I’ve got to be dreaming. Or maybe someone spiked the champagne tower with something much stronger than Dom, because there is no fucking way this is real. No way he’s actually here, in my living room of all places, looking at me with those same warm, chocolate-brown eyes that raised me.
Time has kissed his skin with sun and age, deepened the lines around his eyes and peppered his hair with gray. He’s older now, yes. But not smaller. Not faded. Just as strong, stronger even.
“Daddy?” I say again because that’s literally all I can get out.
“Hi Sugar Bear,” he says, voice raspy and strong.
My knees buckle and hit the floor before my brain can register what’s going on. All the years I held myself together just snapped in half. The sound that tears from me isn’t a cry, not really. It is everything I never got to say. Every bedtime story I lost. Every hug that never came.
He runs to me, drops to the floor and wraps his arms around me. Pulling me into him like no time has passed.
“I’ve got you, baby” he whispers as he kisses the top of my head. His hands shake, one buried in my hair, the other clutching my back as if he’s afraid I’m going to disappear again.
I pull back just enough to see his face. “You’re real,” I whisper.
He gives a soft, cracked laugh. “Of course I am.”
“How?” My voice barely a sound.
Daddy smiles, soft and teary. He brushes away one of my tears with his calloused fingers.
“Your brother,” he says, nodding toward Zeke, now leaning against the arm of the couch like he didn’t just upend my entire world.
“Sort of. Technically, this fed shows up on my porch—suit, badge, the whole nine. Thought I was getting arrested or audited or both. Before I knew it, I was on a plane without so much as a toothbrush.”
Zeke scoffs. “Jesus, Henry. You make it sound like we zip-tied you and tossed you in the luggage bay. It was a damn private jet.”
Daddy chuckles, “Felt a little like it.”
He stands, voice gentler now as he helps me off the ground. “Then he showed me a picture. My little girl. Grown, beautiful, and alive. I swear, I’d have walked barefoot across broken glass just to hold you again.”
His eyes shimmer as he steadies me.
“After that, your brother sat me down and told me everything. All of it.” His voice thickens. “Miami. Dylan. That god-awful house. What you lived through. What you and Zeke built from the wreckage. The kids you’ve saved. The lives you’ve changed.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I can’t even wrap my head around most of it, but Jesus, Bella. I’m so damn proud.” His hands ball into fists. “And also furious. I’m glad that bastard Carlos is in prison. Because if he wasn’t, I’d have lit the son of a bitch on fire myself.”
Zeke snorts from the couch. “I mean, it was on the table. Right next to poisoning and wood chipper. We just couldn’t figure out how to sneak one into Cell Block D.”
My chest stutters with a watery laugh as Daddy shakes his head, but his voice breaks when he looks at me again.
“You got out. You held on. And you didn’t just make it, baby you fought back. You became something no one could ever touch again.”
He reaches up, wipes the tear from my cheek with his thumb. “You’re everything, Sugar Bear. Everything I ever hoped you’d grow up to be. I just wish your mama was here to see it too.”
I feel my throat tighten, but I push through. “Zeke?” I whisper. “What about Vince?”
“He won’t be a problem, Bells,” Zeke says, voice steady but edged with warning. “Far as the world’s concerned, the FBI just pulled Henry in for routine questioning. He’ll be back at the lake house by tomorrow night. No trails. No heat. Vince won’t know a damn thing.”
“Tomorrow?” Daddy’s voice cracks hard with disbelief. “You expect me to walk away after this? After all this time?”
He steps forward, chest rising like a storm building. “I finally have her back and you want me on a flight before the sun sets? No. Fuck no. Not happening, son.”
Zeke’s expression hardens in an instant. “One, I’m not your fucking son, so don’t call me that. Two. Yeah, you are leaving. Tomorrow. We talked about this on the plane. It’s the only way to keep her safe.”
Daddy’s eyes flare. “Safe? She shouldn’t even be in—”
“Not another word,” Zeke snaps. “I swear to fucking God, Henry.”
A voice rings out from the hallway. “Move it, Nathaniel, I know she’s in there!”
Zeke closes his eyes. “Shit.”
The door bursts open. Ellie storms in like a hurricane in gold sequins, heels swinging from one hand, eyes narrowed and feral.
“How long does it take to open a freaking present, Bella? If you think you can skip out on our—”
She freezes mid-step. Eyes landing on Daddy. Then drifting to Zeke. Then back again. Her face twisting slowly, like her brain is buffering.
“Oh my God. Is this some sort of weird age-gap, forbidden brother kink?” She gestures wildly between Daddy and Zeke. “Because I know I said we wanted scandal but damn girl this is a bit much, even for me.”
Nate and Tex rush in behind her, scowling. “We tried to stop her.”
Ellie just walks over and points a French-tipped finger at Daddy, “Seriously. Who is that?”
“Ellie,” I say voice a little shaky. “This is my dad.”
Ellie stares, eyes narrowing like the math isn’t quite mathing. “Your what?”
“My dad.”
“Yeah, heard that. But I thought you were an orphan. Grew up in foster care and met Batman over there during it?”
“I am,” I say quietly. “This is my foster dad. Well… my first foster dad.”
Ellie throws her hands up. “Okay, no. There is so much more to this story than any of you are letting on. Spill it. Now.”
I look at Zeke and shrug. “She deserves to know. I’m going to be living with her soon at Rosethorne. I can’t keep it a secret forever.”
Zeke shakes his head, one hand dragging down his face. “She’s the last person we should loop into this,” he mutters. “Trust fund socialite with a verified account and a phone addiction. That’s a liability waiting to happen.”
“Hey, I can keep a secret,” Ellie snaps, stepping forward, arms crossed. “Just because my selfies get more likes than your brooding ever will doesn’t mean I can’t handle classified intel.”
“Sweetheart, your version of classified intel is which investment banker’s son took you to dinner before ghosting you.”
“At least I get asked to dinner,” she says, lifting her chin. “When’s the last time you actually got laid? You’re so tightly wound it’s a miracle you haven’t combusted.”
“Careful, Whitmore. You poke the bear too many times and he starts thinking you want to be chased.”
“God help us all,” Tex mutters and makes for the whiskey.
“That’s enough you two,” I sigh. “Ellie sit down,” I say, motioning to the couch.
She drops onto the cushions with the grace of someone expecting tea and war.
I take a breath. “This is Henry. My first foster dad. He and his wife Elise got me when I was a baby. They raised me in Arkansas. It was… happy. They were amazing. But then Elise got sick. Cancer.”
I take a deep breath and push through. “She died when I was ten. And because of some screwed-up paperwork, CPS came and took me.”
I glance at Daddy who looks like he wants to set fire to the world all over again. “They dropped me in Miami. New family. It was… not amazing.”
“Foster dad was a fucking monster,” Zeke adds flatly.
I nod. “Yeah. So, long story short, Zeke and I met. He figured out a way to get us out. We ran. Came to New York and built a new life.”
Ellie’s brows are practically in her hairline. “Wait wait wait, so you’re telling me you grew up happy, got stolen by the government, dumped off with a psychopath, broke out with your hacker brother, and now live in a secret Gotham penthouse with Armani Batman and his two henchmen.”
She looks over to Daddy.
“Then you get this very emotionally loaded, Daddy-daughter reunion and no one thought to come upstairs and get me?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“She left out the part where she stabbed a guy with a pencil at fourteen.”
“Zeke,” I snap.
Ellie points, wild-eyed. “Okay, no more plot twists without warning. But first, we have to go back upstairs and make our dramatic exit before people think we died or eloped or something equally scandalous.”
She stands up and flips her hair. “Then we can come back and unpack this soap opera properly, from the beginning. I need a PowerPoint, a wine spritzer, and a personal assistant to help me process.”
Zeke crosses his arms. “What you need Whitmore, is a leash.”
“You offering, Zeke?”
Daddy smiles softly and tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “Go on, Sugar Bear. I’ll be right here when you get back.”
Ellie blinks. “Wait, you’re not coming?”
Zeke tilts his head back and runs a hand over his face. “Secret, remember? Jesus, Whitmore. You’d think someone with a private jet and a thousand-dollar skincare routine could follow basic op-sec.”
Ellie gasps and puts a hand over her heart. “Excuse you, this routine cost twelve hundred, and don’t act like you haven’t been staring.”
I loop my arm through hers, dragging her toward the elevator. “Come on, girl. Let’s get you back upstairs before Cal turns a champagne bottle into a felony and hijacks your spotlight. Again.”
As the elevator doors slide shut behind us, Ellie fans herself with one hand and whispers, “Holy shit, Bells. You’ve been sitting on the scandal of the century and didn’t even leak a teaser trailer?”
???
ZEKE - Age 22
“Time to get our fucking story straight,” I say as soon as the girls leave the penthouse.
Henry doesn’t miss a beat. “We wouldn’t need a story if you’d just told Bella the truth from the beginning.”
“We went over this on the plane. I was a kid when I found her file. I didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t know who she was. I’ve been cleaning up that fallout ever since.”
I meet his glare dead-on. “But she is not finding out about her biological father. Not now. Not ever.”
“She got taken away from me because of you,” Henry spits out, chest rising fast. “You opened that fucking door. You triggered the whole damn thing.”
He’s not entirely wrong. After my parents died and I ended up in Miami all I had was my dad’s old laptop and his words.“Everything in this world bends, Zeke. Laws, people, promises. The one thing that doesn’t bend is code. It tells the truth, even when no one else will.”
I was eleven when I cracked the folder, just some encrypted archive buried in the drive. Thought it was some digital diary from a dead man.
It wasn’t.
It was the first Black Book I’d ever seen. It was names. Bank wires. Surveillance footage that made my skin crawl. Including thirteen seconds of grainy video. A baby being carried out the back of a hospital. I didn’t know who she was. Didn’t know what I was watching.
“This isn’t helping,” Tex mutters. “Y’all need to breathe before someone gets thrown through a wall.”
Henry ignores him, eyes locked on mine like I’m a loaded weapon. “You didn’t know,” he says, low and bitter. “And still you cost me everything.”
I don’t move.
“I lost years, Ezekiel. Watching the clock, wondering if she was dead. If she was scared. Hurt. Alone.”
His voice cracks, but he doesn’t stop. “You think a fancy apartment and stolen money makes it even? You think that all of this is some sort of penance? Think again.”
Nate’s voice cuts through the air like a shot. “Enough.”
He steps between us, eyes hard, shoulders squared.
“Henry, I get it. You’re pissed. You’re heartbroken. But so is he. So is she. And guess what?” He points a finger toward me. “Zeke shows the fuck up. Every time.”
He turns on Henry, voice rising. “You want to talk about loss? Pain? This kid built a war machine out of a trauma response and used it to save hundreds of children. And your daughter’s been right there beside him every step of the way.”
Nate’s voice drops, sharp and final. “The man who made her thinks she’s dead.
We made sure of that. That’s why we keep secrets.
That’s why this story stays straight. You want to blow that up because you’re hurting?
Because you want a few more minutes with the fantasy version of her you had to let go of? ”
He leans closer, nose to nose. “Not going to happen. So drop it. Or walk. But understand this, Bella’s not that ten-year-old you remember. She’s fire now. She’s purpose. And she’s family.”
His tone hardens. “Our family. Whether you can stomach it or not.”
Henry doesn’t speak.
Tex exhales slow. “Well, this is going great. Look I don’t mean to change the subject or anything, but we’ve got one big-golden-Gucci-problem.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Whitmore.”
“Yep, the glitter bomb of Wall Street. What are we going to do about her?” Tex responds raising a hand before I can speak. “And before you say it, no. We are not killing Bella’s best friend.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were thinking it.”