ALLEN
The door to my office clicked shut, a sound as final as a gavel. I didn't turn around immediately. I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the jagged skyline of Manhattan. For three years, I had convinced myself I was the master of this city. I had built a fortress of logic and cold, hard data. But in the span of an hour, a single photograph of a child with my eyes had cracked the foundation of everything I believed to be true.
I heard her footsteps. They were light, hesitant, yet there was an underlying rhythm of defiance in the way she walked. She didn't smell like the expensive, cloying perfumes of the women who usually haunted this floor. She smelled like rain and vanilla.
"Sit down, Celeste," I said, my voice sounding like gravel even to my own ears.
"I'd prefer to stand, Mr. Cross."
I turned. She was pale, her knuckles white as she gripped the strap of her bag, but her chin was tilted upward. She looked like a soldier facing a firing squad.
"That boy," I started, the words feeling heavy, like stones in my mouth. "Gabriel. The math... the timing... it doesn't take a financial analyst to see the correlation. Three years ago. The night at Lavo."
Celeste took a breath, her chest hitching. "It was a long time ago, Allen. A lifetime ago for me."
"Don't call me that," I snapped. The use of my first name felt like an intimate violation in this room of cold steel. "You knew who I was. Even if you didn't know the name that night, you knew the company. You saw the news. You saw the 'Legacy' billboards. Why didn't you come to me?"
"Come to you?" Her voice rose, a sharp, bitter edge cutting through the sterile air of the office. "And say what? I was twenty years old. My parents had just told me I was a 'disgrace' and a 'stain' on the Lawson name. I was a girl who had nothing but a positive pregnancy test and a memory of a man who didn't even bother to ask for my number before I left. You think I wanted to beg for a seat at your table? You think I wanted Gabriel to be a 'settlement' or a 'legal complication' in a Cross family ledger?"
I walked toward her, closing the distance until I could see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes. "He is a Cross. If he is mine, he has a right to this empire. He has a right to the best life money can buy."
"He has the best life love can give him!" she countered, stepping into my space, her eyes flashing with a maternal ferocity that momentarily stunned me. "He is happy. He is loved. He doesn't know about boardrooms, or legacies, or cold-blooded billionaires who think children are just 'assets' to be managed. He's a little boy who likes dinosaurs and chocolate ice cream, and I have kept him safe from people like you—and people like my parents—for three years."
"People like me?" I felt a surge of genuine irritation. "I am his father."
"Biologically? Perhaps. But a father is the person who holds him when he has a nightmare. A father is the person who works three jobs to make sure he has a warm home. You? You're just a man with a very expensive watch and a very empty life."
The silence that followed was suffocating. No one talked to me this way. Not the board, not the competitors, not even my father. She was a junior analyst with no leverage, yet she was looking at me as if I were the one who was bankrupt.
I moved to my desk and pressed a button on the intercom. "Anastasia, cancel my 2:00 PM. And bring me the Lawson file from the archives. The one regarding the 2022 internal 'family restructuring.'"
"Right away, Mr. Cross," Anastasia's voice crackled back, sounding suspicious and overly eager.
Celeste's face went from pale to ghostly. "What are you doing?"
"I'm doing what I do best, Celeste. I'm gathering data," I said, leaning back in my chair. "You're a Lawson. Or you were. I want to know exactly what they did to you. And I want to know exactly what you've been doing for the last three years."
"I told you, I've been surviving. I don't want anything from you."
"That's irrelevant," I said, the CEO persona sliding back into place like a visor. "If that boy is my heir, he is the most important person in the Cross lineage. My parents... they've been breathing down my neck for an heir for years. If they find out about him, they won't just 'ask' for him. They will take him. They have the lawyers, the power, and the will to do it."
I saw the first flicker of real terror in her eyes. She knew I was right. My father, Doncan, was a shark. If he saw a grandson—a Cross grandson—he would stop at nothing to claim him.
"You wouldn't," she whispered.
"I'm not saying I will," I said, my voice softening just a fraction. "I'm saying you are in a very dangerous position. You're working in my company, under the nose of my parents, with a child who looks exactly like me. The secret is out, Celeste. The only question is how we manage the fallout."
"There is no 'we,'" she said, though her voice lacked the conviction it had moments ago.
"There is now," I replied. "From this moment on, you aren't just a junior analyst. You're a liability I need to keep close. You'll work directly under me. Not Anastasia. Me. I need to see if you're as good an analyst as you claim, and I need to... observe... the situation."
"Observe?" She let out a hollow laugh. "You mean you want to keep me under your thumb so I don't run again."
"Exactly. Now, go back to your desk. Clear your things. You're moving to the executive suite. Anastasia will handle the paperwork, though she won't be happy about it."
Celeste stared at me for a long beat. I could see the gears turning in her head—the desperate need for the paycheck versus the absolute dread of being near me. She was trapped, and she knew it.
"I'm doing this for Gabriel," she said, her voice trembling but firm. "Not for you."
"Naturally," I said.
As she turned to leave, her hand on the doorknob, I couldn't help myself. "Celeste?"
She paused, not looking back.
"Does he... does he have my temper?"
She stood silent for a moment, the tension in the room stretching to the breaking point. "He has your eyes," she whispered. "But thank God, he has his mother's heart."
She slipped out of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I looked at the glass table where her phone had sat just minutes ago. I could still see the image of the boy in my mind.
I picked up the phone and dialed Leo.
"I need a drink," I said when he picked up.
"It's two in the afternoon, Allen. What happened? Did the market crash?"
"No," I said, looking out at the city that suddenly felt much smaller than it had this morning. "I just found out my legacy isn't a company. It's a three-year-old boy who likes dinosaurs."
"What? Allen, what are you talking about?"
"I'll tell you tonight," I said, hanging up.
I sat back, my heart doing something I hadn't felt in years. It was beating. Truly beating. Not out of stress or anger, but out of a terrifying, exhilarating sense of purpose.
The fortress was compromised. But for the first time, I wasn't sure I wanted to fix the leak.