Chapter 4 - Shadows in the Boardroom
While Elena slept off the exhaustion of her near-fatal collapse, I sat in the adjoining private consultation room, staring through the glass partition at Leo, who was now awake and happily eating a bowl of oatmeal brought up by the hospital’s private kitchen staff.
The heavy oak door clicked open.
Marcus stepped into the room, his dark overcoat damp from the intermittent drizzle outside. He looked around the sterile suite before his eyes settled on me.
“The hospital floor is locked down, Boss. No unauthorized personnel within three floors,” Marcus reported crisply, pulling a manila folder from his breast folder. “I also ran the background check you requested on the mother—Elena Rojas. It’s clean. Too clean.”
I looked up from the glass. “What do you mean?”
“She hasn't held a formal W-2 job in four years. She’s been living off-grid, moving between cheap motels and cash-only sublets across Brooklyn and Queens. No credit history, no criminal record, no medical insurance.” Marcus frowned, sliding a photograph across the mahogany table. It was a grainy surveillance still of Elena walking out of a grocery store six months ago, holding a much younger Leo’s hand. “Boss... are you sure about this? In our line of work, sudden reappearances from the past are rarely accidental. Could she be a plant?”
“A plant?” I let out a cold, humorless laugh. “Marcus, she was dying in a dumpster-lined alley behind a radiator shop with thirty dollars to her name. Unless my rivals have mastered the art of biological assassination through starvation, she wasn't planted here. She was hiding.”
“Hiding from who?”
“From me,” I said quietly.
Marcus blinked, stunned. “From you? Why would the mother of your child hide from one of the most powerful men in the city?”
“Because when I built this empire, I built it on blood, retribution, and enemies who would slice my throat the moment they found a vulnerability,” I said, standing up and walking over to the window, looking out over the glittering skyline of Manhattan. “If Salvatore Rossi or any of the old-guard families had known I had a son... Leo wouldn't have lived to see his first birthday. Elena knew that. She ran so we both could live.”
Marcus fell silent. He knew as well as I did what the syndicate war looked like. He knew the cost of bearing the Vance name.
“What do our next moves look like, Boss?” Marcus asked carefully. “Do we move them to the penthouse on Fifth Avenue? Or the estate in Greenwich?”
“Neither,” I said, turning around with absolute finality in my eyes. “The penthouse is too exposed, and Greenwich is too far from my security net. We are moving them to the fortified safehouse on the Upper East Side. The one with the biometric perimeter grid and the underground motor pool.”
“And the boy?”
“Leo stays with me,” I stated. “Every minute of every day, until I figure out how to keep him safe from the wolves circling my perimeter.”
Before Marcus could reply, the door to the consultation room opened softly.
Elena stood in the doorway, wearing a fresh hospital gown, leaning heavily against the doorframe for support. Her dark hair was combed back, and though she was still frighteningly pale, her eyes held that fierce, unyielding spark I remembered from the streets fifteen years ago.
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“You’re not locking us in a cage, Ethan,” Elena said, her voice weak but steady.
I crossed the room in two strides, gently placing a hand on her arm to guide her back to a chair. “You aren't going into a cage, Elena. You’re going into a fortress. And whether you like it or not, neither of you is stepping foot back on the streets of New York.”
