Chapter 14

 A Stranger's Message

I stare at the message until the words blur, my thumb hovering over the screen without quite daring to touch it.

"Amara?" Julian's voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. "What is it?"

I turn the phone toward him wordlessly, and I watch his expression shift from confusion to alarm as he reads it.

"Who sent this?" His voice sharpens instantly, protective in a way that makes my chest tighten.

"I don't know." My hands have started to shake again, and I press the phone against my side to hide it. "It's an unknown number."

My father appears beside me before I can stop him, his eyes catching the screen over Julian's shoulder, and whatever color remains in his face after the confrontation with Isabella drains away completely.

"Dad." My voice comes out small, uncertain in a way I haven't sounded since I was a teenager. "What does that mean? What happened the night I was conceived?"

For a moment, my father says nothing at all, and that silence terrifies me more than anything Isabella said in the lobby.

"Not here." His voice is rough, unsteady in a way I've never heard from him. "This isn't a conversation for a public building surrounded by reporters."

"Dad." I grab his sleeve, forcing him to look at me. "You're scaring me. Just tell me it's nothing. Tell me this is another one of Isabella's tricks."

He doesn't answer right away, and the longer his silence stretches, the colder the dread pooling in my stomach becomes.

"Richard." Noah's voice is careful, watching my father's face with the same scrutiny I imagine he reserves for reading an opponent across a negotiating table. "If there's something Amara needs to know, now is the time to say it. Not after another message, not after another ambush."

My father's jaw tightens, and for the first time in my entire life, I watch him look genuinely lost, the composed, unshakeable man who built an empire from nothing suddenly looking like he doesn't know where to begin.

"Your mother and I," he starts, then stops, pressing his fingers briefly against his eyes. "There are things about your birth I never told you, Amara, because I never saw the point in reopening wounds that had already healed."

"What kind of things." My voice cracks on the question.

He glances around at the lobby, still buzzing with reporters and lingering board members, and shakes his head firmly. "Not here. I'll tell you everything, I promise you that, but not surrounded by cameras that will turn whatever I say into tomorrow's headline."

Julian steps in smoothly, already scanning the room for an exit. "There's a private conference room on the executive floor. Noah can get us access."

Noah nods immediately, already moving toward the elevator bank without hesitation, and something about the way he takes charge, quiet and efficient, without waiting to be asked, catches me off guard.

The elevator ride up is silent except for the soft hum of machinery, my father staring fixedly at the floor numbers ticking upward, Julian's hand resting lightly on my shoulder in a gesture of quiet support. Noah stands slightly apart, watching my father with an expression I can't quite read, something between suspicion and concern.

The conference room Noah leads us to is glass walled, overlooking the city skyline, and the moment the door clicks shut behind us, sealing out the noise of the lobby below, my father finally exhales, sinking heavily into one of the leather chairs at the head of the table.

"Amara." He looks up at me, and the pain etched into his face makes my heart start hammering all over again. "Your mother and I loved each other very much. That part was never a lie."

"But." My voice comes out barely above a whisper.

"But there was a time, before you were born, when things were difficult between us." He clasps his hands together tightly on the table, his knuckles going white. "Your mother spent several months separated from me, staying with a friend while we worked through a difficult period in our marriage. I didn't ask questions about that time, not because I didn't want to know, but because I loved her enough to let it go once she came home."

"Dad, what are you saying." My legs feel unsteady beneath me, and I grip the back of the nearest chair to keep myself upright.

"I'm saying that when your mother came home, she was already pregnant." His voice breaks on the final word, and the room goes utterly silent except for the distant hum of the city outside the glass walls. "And I never had a paternity test run, Amara, because I loved you the moment I held you, and it never once mattered to me whether the blood in your veins was mine."

The floor seems to tilt beneath me, the entire foundation of everything I thought I knew about myself cracking wide open in the space of a single sentence.

"You're saying." I can barely force the words out. "You might not be my biological father."

My father's eyes fill with tears, the first I've ever seen from him in my entire life. "I'm saying it never mattered to me. Not for one single day. You are my daughter in every way that matters, Amara, and nothing anyone says or proves will ever change that."

Behind me, I hear Julian's sharp intake of breath, and Noah has gone very still by the window, his expression unreadable.

My phone buzzes again in my hand, the screen lighting up with a second message from the same unknown number, and my whole body goes cold before I even read it.

Unknown: Ask him who your mother was staying with during those months. The answer might explain why the Montgomery and Frost families have been tangled together far longer than any of you realize.