Chapter 1: The Little Girl Who Called Him Dad
“Daddy.””
One word shattered the most expensive wedding in Manhattan.
Damien Cross stood beneath a ceiling of crystal chandeliers, dressed in a black tuxedo worth more than most people earned in a year. Behind him, a string quartet fell silent. In front of him, hundreds of wealthy guests stared at a little girl standing in the aisle with a crying baby in her arms.
She looked about seven.
Her brown shoes were cracked at the toes. Her pale blue dress was too thin for the freezing October evening, and her dark hair hung in tangled strands around a face streaked with tears.
The infant against her chest wore a pink sweater with one missing button.
“Please,” the girl whispered.
“I need to talk to him.””
Victoria Sterling, the bride, turned sharply. Her diamond earrings swung beneath the lights.
“Get that child out of here,” she ordered.
Two security guards immediately approached.
The girl stumbled backward, clutching the baby tighter.
“Don't take my sister!”” she cried.
“Please! She's all I have left!””
The baby wailed louder.
Damien barely heard it.
He was staring at the girl.
Something about her face had struck him with the force of a physical blow. The shape of her eyes. The tiny crease between her eyebrows. Even the way she pressed her lips together when she was frightened.
He had seen those features before.
On someone he had once loved.
Someone he had spent five years trying to forget.
“Stop,” Damien said.
The guards halted.
Victoria tightened her fingers around his arm.
“Damien, darling, this is a wedding, not a homeless shelter.””
Several guests exchanged uncomfortable glances.
Damien slowly descended the two steps from the altar.
“What is your name?”” he asked the girl.
“Lily.””
“Lily what?””
“Bennett.””
The surname hit him harder than he expected.
Bennett.
His throat tightened.
“Who told you to come here?””
Lily shifted the baby against her shoulder. Her small hands trembled as she reached into a faded pink backpack.
“My mommy.””
She pulled out a photograph with bent corners and a crease running down the middle.
Damien took one look at it and forgot how to breathe.
The picture had been taken seven years earlier in a private hospital room. A younger Damien sat beside a hospital bed, exhausted but smiling, holding a newborn wrapped in a white blanket.
Beside him lay a woman with dark hair, her eyes closed in peaceful exhaustion.
Elena Bennett.
His Elena.
The woman who had vanished from his life without explanation.
The woman he had searched for until his father threatened to destroy her family if Damien continued pursuing her.
The woman he had eventually convinced himself had abandoned him.
His fingers tightened around the photograph.
“Where did you get this?”” he asked.
“Mommy kept it in a box under her bed.”” Lily wiped her nose with her sleeve.
“She said I should only show it to you if something happened to her.””
Damien looked at the baby.
“How old is your sister?””
“Eleven months.””
“And your mother?””
Lily's lower lip quivered.
“She died three weeks ago.””
The ballroom seemed to tilt around him.
Victoria stepped forward, her face carefully arranged into a sympathetic smile.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, though her voice carried no warmth.
“I'm terribly sorry about your mother. But whoever put you up to this has made a terrible mistake.””
Lily shook her head.
“Mommy said Mr. Cross might not remember her at first. She said he might be angry because he didn't know about us.””
Damien stared at her.
“Us?””
Lily nodded.
“She said you didn't leave because you didn't love us. She said you didn't know we existed.””
A murmur rippled through the guests.
Damien looked down at the photograph again. He remembered the hospital room, the smell of antiseptic, Elena's hand resting in his. He remembered the promise he had made while holding their newborn daughter.
I will protect you both.
Then, three days later, Elena had disappeared.
His father had told him she had accepted money to leave. His lawyers had produced documents bearing what appeared to be her signature. Damien had searched for months, but every lead ended in silence.
Eventually, grief hardened into anger.
He had built his empire on the belief that people always revealed their price.
Now a seven-year-old girl stood before him, wearing shoes with holes in the soles, carrying a photograph he had not seen in seven years.
“What was your mother's full name?”” he asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Dr. Elena Bennett.””
Dr.
His eyes snapped back to Lily's face.
Elena had been a medical student when they met. She had dreamed of becoming a pediatrician, spending her life helping children whose parents couldn't afford private hospitals.
He had promised to fund her education.
Instead, he had let his family convince him she had betrayed him.
“Damien.”” Victoria's nails dug into his arm.
“You cannot possibly believe this.””
He turned toward her.
“Let go of me.””
Her eyes widened.
“Excuse me?””
“Your hand. Take it off my arm.””
She released him, her smile disappearing.
“This is obviously a scam,” she said loudly enough for the guests to hear.
“Someone has coached this child to ruin our wedding. My father warned me that desperate people would try to exploit your name.””
Lily flinched at the word desperate.
Damien noticed.
He also noticed the baby's lips had begun turning pale from crying.
“Get a blanket,” he ordered his assistant, who stood near the ballroom doors.
“And call the family doctor.””
Victoria stepped between Damien and the child.
“If you walk away from this altar for her, you're humiliating me in front of everyone.””
Damien looked at the woman he was supposed to marry.
For three years, Victoria had been the perfect fiancée. Beautiful, polished, connected to the right families. Their marriage would unite two business empires and make his company nearly untouchable.
But as she stood there, more concerned about the guests than the freezing child in front of her, something inside him went cold.
“Move, Victoria.””
“You're making a mistake.””
“Then let me make it.””
He approached Lily and lowered himself to one knee.
“What's your sister's name?””
“Rose.””
“Hello, Rose,” he whispered.
The baby hiccupped, her tiny fingers curling around the edge of his shirt.
Damien felt something unfamiliar and terrifying bloom inside his chest.
Hope.
He looked at Lily again.
“Did your mother tell you anything else?””
The little girl hesitated.
Then she leaned closer and whispered, “She said that if you were still angry with her, I should tell you about the night Grandpa came to our house.””
Damien's blood ran cold.
“My grandfather?””
“No. Your daddy's daddy.””
His father.
Richard Cross.
“What happened that night, Lily?””
She glanced nervously at Victoria before answering.
“He came when Mommy was pregnant. He said that if she ever told you about us, he would make sure you never saw us.””
Damien stood so quickly that a nearby guest stepped back.
Richard had died two years earlier.
But his secrets were still alive.
Before Damien could ask another question, Lily reached into her backpack again.
This time, she pulled out a small envelope sealed with yellowed tape.
“Mommy said you should read this only if I found you.””
Damien took it.
His name was written across the front in Elena's familiar handwriting.
But beneath it, in a different hand, someone had added a single sentence.
*If Damien reads this, the truth about his father's death will finally come out.*
Damien stared at the words.
May you like
His father had died in what the police called a tragic accident.
And Elena had apparently known something about it.
