Chapter 2
PART 2
Grace rode to Chicago in the back of an armored black SUV that smelled of leather, smoke, and rain. Nathan Vale sat beside her, separated by only a few inches, yet he felt as distant as a judge handing down a sentence.
For nearly twenty minutes, he said nothing.
Outside the tinted windows, the dark Wisconsin roads blurred into streaks of black trees and silver headlights. Grace kept her hands folded in her lap, afraid that if she moved, the men in the front seat might remember she was merchandise.
Nathan finally turned his head. His gray eyes moved over her face, pausing on the bruise Elaine had left there.
“Did your mother do that?”
Grace looked down. “Does it matter?”
“It tells me what kind of family sold you.”
The word family cut through her. “They didn’t sell me. They—” She stopped. There was no softer word for what had happened.
Nathan reached into a side compartment and poured water into a crystal glass. He handed it to her. She hesitated.
“It isn’t drugged,” he said. “If I wanted you unconscious, you already would be.”
Grace accepted it with trembling fingers.
“Why me?” she asked. “You could have bought anyone in that room.”
“I did not go there to buy a woman.”
“Then why were you there?”
“To kill Elias Crowe.”
Grace stared at him.
Nathan said it as calmly as if he were discussing the weather. “He has been moving girls through my city. I intended to make an example of him tonight. Then I saw you on that stage.”
“You felt sorry for me?”
“No.” His answer was immediate. “Pity is useless.”
Grace’s fingers tightened around the glass.
“I need a mother,” Nathan said.
She gave a bitter laugh before she could stop herself. “Then you bought the wrong woman.”
“I disagree.”
“I can’t have children.”
“I have children.”
The words landed between them.
Nathan looked back out the window. “Four. Emma is fifteen. Jack is eleven. Lily is seven. Noah is four. Their mother, Caroline, died three years ago.”
“The car bomb,” Grace whispered.
His jaw flexed once. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
He did not respond to the sympathy. Perhaps he had buried that part of himself with his wife.
“I have hired seventeen nannies,” he continued. “Three were bribed by enemies. Two tried to seduce me. One sold photographs of my children to a tabloid. Four quit after threats. One hit my son.”
Grace’s stomach tightened.
Nathan’s voice dropped. “I need someone who will not try to replace Caroline by giving me another heir. Someone who cannot use pregnancy as a weapon. Someone broken enough to understand broken children.”
Grace flinched. “You think I’m broken?”
“I think your parents taught you to believe you are.”
That silenced her.
The SUV turned through iron gates and climbed a private drive toward a mansion on the North Shore. It was not a home. It was a fortress pretending to be one—limestone walls, tall windows, armed guards under the portico, cameras hidden in tasteful shadows.
Inside, the entry hall was enormous, all marble floors and crystal chandeliers. Beautiful, expensive, cold.
A bald man built like a wall approached them. “Boss.”
“Marcus,” Nathan said. “Bring the children to the east room.”
“At this hour?”
“Now.”
The man glanced at Grace but asked no questions.
Ten minutes later, Grace stood in a formal sitting room while Nathan’s children were brought in wearing pajamas and suspicion.
Emma came first, tall and sharp-eyed, her dark hair in a messy braid. She looked at Grace with instant hatred. Jack stood behind her, thin and quiet, one hand gripping the sleeve of his hoodie. Lily carried a stuffed lamb nearly gray with age. Little Noah clung to Marcus, half asleep and already crying.
Nathan stood beside Grace like an executioner introducing a verdict.
“This is Grace Holloway,” he said. “She will live here from now on. She will oversee this household and care for you.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Another nanny?”
“No,” Nathan said. “More than that.”
Grace turned to him, startled.
Emma laughed, but tears flashed in her eyes. “You bought us a new mom?”
Nathan’s expression hardened. “Watch your tone.”
“No, you watch yours,” Emma snapped. “Mom dies, you disappear into your office, and now you drag in some woman from wherever and expect us to call her family?”
“Emma.”
“No.” Emma pointed at Grace. “She is not our mother. She’s just another woman who wants your money.”
Grace felt the words strike, but she did not blame the girl. Anger was easier than grief.
“I don’t want his money,” Grace said softly.
Emma turned on her. “Then what do you want?”
Grace had no answer.
Before she could invent one, Noah began sobbing harder. “I want Mommy.”
The room shattered.
Nathan went completely still, his face turning to stone. He looked like a man who could command armies but had no idea how to comfort one small boy.
Grace stepped forward slowly. “May I?”
Noah buried his face in Marcus’s shoulder.
Grace knelt several feet away, careful not to crowd him. “My grandmother used to sing when I was scared,” she said. “She was terrible at it, honestly. Sounded like a screen door in a storm.”
Jack’s mouth twitched.
Grace began humming softly. Not a perfect lullaby. Just a tune she remembered from childhood, warm and low and steady.
The room changed by inches.
Noah’s sobs softened. Lily’s grip on her lamb loosened. Jack looked at Grace for the first time. Even Emma stopped glaring long enough to listen.
After a while, Noah reached one little hand toward Grace.
Marcus looked at Nathan.
Nathan gave a single nod.
Grace gathered the boy into her arms. He was warm, heavy, real. His tears soaked her dress. She held him and felt something inside her break open—not pain this time, but a fierce, aching tenderness.
She would never carry a child under her heart.
But this child was crying against it.
Across the room, Nathan watched her with an expression Grace could not read.
Finally, he said, “You start tomorrow.”
Emma’s face twisted. “She won’t last a week.”
Grace looked at the teenager over Noah’s dark curls. Her cheek still burned from her mother’s slap. Her body still shook from the auction stage. Her life had been taken from her and renamed.
But for the first time that night, she lifted her chin.
“Maybe not,” Grace said. “But while I’m here, nobody in this house cries alone.”
Emma rolled her eyes and stormed out.
Nathan turned toward the door. “Marcus will show you your room.”
“That’s it?” Grace asked.
He paused.
“You buy me, bring me here, hand me four grieving children, and walk away?”
Nathan looked back. “I did not buy weakness, Miss Holloway.”
“No,” Grace said, still holding Noah. “You bought a woman who has nothing left to lose.”
May you like
For the first time, Nathan Vale looked almost surprised.
Then he left her there in the cold, beautiful room with four children who did not trust her, a dead woman’s shadow on every wall, and the terrifying realization that the thing her parents called useless might be the only reason she had survived.
