Chapter 2 - The Audit of the Past
"Where did you get him?"
Mallerie’s voice was no longer trembling. It was forged in steel, sharpened by the sudden, brutal realization that someone had lied to her.
Gideon held her gaze for three long, agonizing seconds. The ambient noise of the gala—the clinking glasses, the muted laughter—seemed to recede into a distant vacuum.
Then Gideon reached out, his large hands hovering over Owen. "Give him to me."
Mallerie stepped backward instinctively, pulling the baby tight against her chest. "Not until you answer me."
Two of Gideon’s security guards, men built like brick walls in identical black suits, materialized from the shadows near the ballroom doors, their hands dropping toward their waistbands.
Gideon raised a single finger, freezing them in their tracks. "My son is not a bargaining chip."
"Neither was mine," Mallerie hissed, her eyes locking onto his with a ferocious, motherly defiance that made even the hardened mafia boss hesitate. "You want him back? Tell me where he came from."
Gideon looked down at Owen, who had begun to fuss again, sensing the rising tension. A muscle ticked along Gideon’s jawline.
"He was placed in my arms three days after he was born," Gideon said quietly.
The floor beneath Mallerie’s feet felt like sinking sand. "Three days? By whom?"
Before Gideon could answer, the heavy oak doors of the ballroom swung open. A hotel employee in a gray vest, white shirt, and name badge pushed an empty stroller down the aisle toward them.
"Pardon me, Mr. Vale," the employee said, his voice entirely too bright, his eyes darting restlessly around the room. "Management sent the stroller down for the young master."
Mallerie’s instincts—honed by months of quiet desperation and survival—screamed a warning. She looked at the man's name badge.
Thomas Avery.
Her gaze flicked across the ballroom toward the dessert station near the service corridor, where another employee was stacking plates. His badge also read Thomas Avery.
"Gideon," Mallerie whispered, not raising her voice.
The faux employee seized the stroller, shoved it aggressively between them, and reached for Owen with a speed that defied his polite demeanor.
"Get away from him!" Mallerie screamed.
Gideon reacted with terrifying efficiency. Before the man’s fingers could graze Owen’s blanket, Gideon caught his forearm in a bone-crushing grip, twisting it upward with a sharp pop that echoed over the music.
The stranger tried to wrench himself free, reaching inside his vest for a concealed blade, but Gideon drove him backward against a massive marble column with controlled, devastating force, pinning his arm behind his back.
"Who sent you?" Gideon demanded, his voice dropping into a lethal whisper.
The man gritted his teeth, refusing to speak.
Gideon’s security detail swarmed the column in a blur of motion, hauling the intruder off his feet. "Take him downstairs," Gideon ordered, his eyes dark as a winter storm. "Alive. I want answers by the time I get down there."
As the guards dragged the struggling impostor through the service doors, Owen whimpered and buried his face deeper into Mallerie’s shoulder. She rubbed his back automatically, her mind racing at a hundred miles an hour.
Gideon turned back to her. The exhaustion on his face was real, but beneath it lay a dangerous, awakened focus.
"You saw the badge," Gideon noted.
"Yes. Before your men did. I work here, Gideon. I know the staff. There is no Thomas Avery."
Gideon’s eyes remained locked on hers. "Someone just tried to take Owen after seeing you holding him."
"Then somebody knows something about who he really is," Mallerie said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Which means you’re not leaving alone."
Mallerie’s head snapped upward. "Don't start ordering me around."
"Someone just reached for the child in your arms, and I stopped him," Gideon said, stepping closer, invading her personal space with the undeniable gravity of his presence. "Mallerie, this is bigger than a hotel ballroom. Whoever tried to grab him knew he was here."
"Maybe," she countered, her chin raised. "Aliens could be invading for all I know. But you don't get to replace one nightmare with another and call it protection."
That stopped him. Gideon looked at her—really looked at her—as though he were seeing her for the first time. Not as a catering employee, not as a stranger in a ballroom, but as an equal force of nature.
Mallerie carefully loosened her grip, handing Owen back to his adoptive father.
The baby immediately began to cry, twisting his tiny body back toward Mallerie with a desperate, heartbreaking shriek. Gideon had to brace one hand behind his head to keep him secure.
"Easy. I’ve got you," Gideon murmured to the baby, though his eyes never left Mallerie’s face.
Mallerie hated what the sound of the baby's crying did to her chest, but she forced herself to stand tall. "You want me to trust you? Start by treating me like I have a choice."
Gideon looked from his crying son to the woman refusing to fear him. A slow, grudging respect flickered in his slate-gray eyes.
Finally, he nodded. "Then choose."
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"I’m coming with you," Mallerie said, grabbing her serving tray from the floor and tossing it onto a nearby table. "Not because you ordered me to. Because I’m finding out whether that baby is mine."
Gideon’s expression shifted, a heavy shadow falling over his features. "And I’ll tell you exactly how he came to me."
