Chapter 2 - The Fortress in the Pines
Ten months later, the morning mist off the coast of Maine tasted of cedar and ocean salt.
The property sat on a granite bluff three miles outside of Camden, surrounded by eighty acres of spruce and white pine. From the stone terrace, you couldn't see another roofline—only the dark, rolling chop of Penobscot Bay and the pale gray expanse of the North Atlantic sky.
I had named it *The Anchorage*, though none of the deed documents bore that name. On paper, the property belonged to *Borealis Holdings LLC*, a Delaware-registered entity owned by a trust whose trustee was a seventy-year-old corporate attorney in Zurich who had never set foot in the United States.
It was an impenetrable wall of paper. Harrison Polk could have spent three million dollars on forensic accountants and never pierced it.
Inside the sunlit kitchen, the only sound was the rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock and the soft, snuffling breaths of the baby sleeping against my chest.
Noah.
He had arrived on a Tuesday in June, three weeks early, screaming with the ferocious indignity of someone who had no intention of being ignored. He had thick, dark hair that curled slightly at the nape of his neck, skin like warm honey, and eyes that had settled, by his third month, into a startling, slate-gray hue.
Eddie’s eyes.
Not Edmund Sr.’s—the old man’s eyes were cold and pale, like frozen pond water. Noah’s eyes were Eddie’s when Eddie was nineteen and still believed he could be an artist instead of a corporate prince: open, perceptive, and dangerously sharp.
I adjusted the linen sling holding Noah against my collarbone, resting my chin on his soft crown. He smelled of milk, lavender lotion, and warm skin. For ten months, I had lived in this bubble of absolute isolation, watching my belly swell through the harsh New England winter, walking the snow-packed trails with Marcus Sterling’s vetted security guard stationed at the gate, building a life entirely separate from the rot I had left behind in Texas.
Every morning at eight, my encrypted tablet received a dossier from Marcus.
I opened it now, leaning against the marble kitchen island with a mug of black coffee in one hand.
The screen illuminated with photos taken four days ago outside the Houston Petroleum Club.
Edmund Sr. looked older. The stroke rumors that had circulated through the Houston business press two months ago hadn't been entirely baseless; his left shoulder hung slightly lower than his right, and he carried a silver-tipped walking stick that he tried to pass off as an eccentric accessory rather than a medical necessity.
Beside him in the photo was Eddie.
My husband. Well, my ex-husband now. The decree had been finalized eight months ago in a closed-door proceeding that took all of twelve minutes. Eddie looked immaculate in a Brioni suit, but there was a hollow, sunken quality around his cheekbones. He looked like a man who was working seventy-hour weeks to outrun his own conscience.
And then there was Paige.
The photo caught her stepping out of a black Maybach, wearing a cream Valentino dress that showed off a slender frame that had clearly bounced back quickly after childbirth. She was smiling directly at the camera, her hand resting possessively on Eddie’s forearm.
According to Marcus’s notes:
*Paige Whitfield gave birth to a boy, Hunter Edmund Hargrove, on May 14 at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. Edmund Sr. hosted a private celebration at the River Oaks estate; three hundred guests, city council members, federal judges in attendance. Wedding date officially announced for November 12 at the Hargrove Country Estate in Bellville.*
November 12.
Three months from now.
I zoomed in on the photo of Paige. She was wearing a six-carat cushion-cut diamond on her left ring finger. It was larger than the ring Eddie had given me. Edmund Sr. had clearly spared no expense in decorating the woman who had delivered his precious third-generation heir.
Noah stirred against my chest, letting out a small, contented sigh, his tiny hand curling into a fist against my collarbone.
I smiled, cold and slow.
"Hunter," I whispered to the empty kitchen. "What a tidy little name."
The tablet chimed with a second document. This one was marked *HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL / PRIVILEGED*.
It was a medical summary from an obstetrics clinic in Sugar Land, Texas, dated thirteen months ago—two weeks before the meeting in Edmund Sr.’s forty-fourth-floor conference room.
Marcus had added a note at the top:
*Caroline. Look at the gestational dates on page three. Then look at Eddie’s travel itinerary for the energy summit in Singapore last September.*
I pulled up the Singapore flight logs that I had kept from my marriage—the ones Eddie had sent me so I would know when his private jet was landing at Changi Airport.
September 12 through September 28. Eddie had been halfway across the world for seventeen days.
I scrolled down to page three of Paige’s early ultrasound report.
The conception window didn't align. Not by three weeks.
My fingers went cold against the glass screen.
Paige hadn't just seduced Eddie to secure a position in the Hargrove family. She had run a con on the oldest, most arrogant predator in Texas commercial real estate. She had handed Edmund Sr. the one thing he craved more than power—a male successor—and the old man had been so blinded by his own vanity that he hadn't even checked the foundation before building the shrine.
May you like
"Oh, Eddie," I murmured, staring at the screen while my son slept against my heart. "You didn't just trade me for a lie. You signed the check for it."
***
