Chapter 5

The Bedford estate was a fortress of limestone and ivy, a sprawling relic of the Blackwood legacy that felt more like a museum than a sanctuary. For Dante, it had always been a place of order. But as the sun began to set on the first day of their relocation, the order was a lie.

​He stood in the gallery, the long hallway that separated the east wing—now the medical suite and nursery—from the rest of the house. He was the owner of the floor, the walls, and the air, yet he was barred from the heavy oak doors at the end of the corridor.

​Bella had been efficient. She had moved the triplets in at 8:00 AM with the clinical precision of a tactical unit. Leo was settled into the specialized bed, his monitors humming in a steady, reassuring rhythm. Maya and Toby were in the adjacent playroom, their muffled laughter occasionally filtering through the wood—a sound that made Dante’s chest tighten with a pressure no corporate crisis could replicate.

​He was experiencing a total system failure of control.

​Dante looked at his phone. No new notifications from the lab. He paced the length of the gallery, his footsteps silent on the hand-woven rugs. He had spent his life making decisions that moved markets, but here, he couldn't even decide which side of a door to stand on.

​"Sir."

​Marcus was standing at the far end of the hall, looking smaller than usual against the towering portraits of Dante’s ancestors.

​"The results?" Dante asked, his voice sharp enough to draw blood.

​"Not yet, sir. The lab in Zurich is running the third sequence. They’re being thorough."

​"I don’t want thorough. I want the truth."

​"The truth takes time, Mr. Blackwood. In the meantime... we have a leak."

​Dante stopped pacing. He turned his slate-gray eyes toward Marcus, his expression hardening. "A leak? Arthur swore the non-interference agreement was airtight."

​"It’s not the legal team, sir. It’s the movement. Three black SUVs, a private medical transport, and the redirection of Dr. Aris... the press is starting to wonder why Blackwood Global is suddenly interested in pediatric pathology. There’s a blind item in the Chronicle this afternoon. They’re calling it the 'Secret Inheritance.'"

​Dante felt a flare of cold fury. "Kill it. Buy the paper if you have to, but I want that story buried before Silas sees it."

​"It’s already being picked up by the aggregators, sir. We can slow it down, but we can't stop the internet. People are asking who the woman is."

​Dante looked toward the oak doors. Bella was behind them. She wasn't scrolling through news feeds. She wasn't checking the stock price. She was likely holding Leo’s hand or reading a story to Maya and Toby, completely indifferent to the storm gathering outside her windows.

​Inside the east wing, the world was small and soft. Bella sat in a rocking chair by Leo’s bed, the steady whoosh-hiss of the nebulizer the only soundtrack. Leo was asleep, his face pale but his breathing easier than it had been in weeks. In the corner, Maya and Toby were building a tower out of blocks, their movements careful, their voices low as they whispered to each other about the "big castle" they were living in.

​They didn't know about the DNA tests. They didn't know about the "security reconciliation" at the airport or the billionaire in the hallway who was currently trying to buy a newspaper to keep their names out of it. To them, this was just another move, another temporary port in the storm of their lives.

​Bella’s phone buzzed on the side table. It was Simon.

​Media's sniffing. Stay inside. I’m handling the injunction.

​Bella didn't reply. She didn't have to. She had already decided that the world outside didn't exist until Leo was healthy. She looked at her children—her unit—and felt the weight of the "no-contact" rule she had imposed. It wasn't just to punish Dante. It was to protect the only thing she had left: their peace.

​She knew Dante was out there. She could feel his presence through the walls, a restless, vibrating energy that wanted to break down the door and claim what he thought was his. But biology wasn't fatherhood, and a contract wasn't a family.

​She stood up, kissed Leo’s forehead, and guided Maya and Toby toward the bathroom for their evening routine. She was a mother. She was a consultant. She was a woman who had fended off a Blackwood for three years. The media pressure was just noise.

​Dante was back in the library. The lights were dimmed, the only glow coming from the bank of monitors on his desk. He was watching the security feeds.

​The cameras in the east wing were disabled—another condition of Bella’s—but he could see the hallway. He could see the silhouettes of the medical staff moving in and out. Every time a nurse left the room, he wanted to grab them by the shoulders and demand an update. Not on the merger. Not on the Singapore leak. On Toby’s appetite. On Maya’s drawings. On the way Leo looked when he woke up.

​He felt like a ghost in his own house.

​He picked up a glass of scotch and drained it, the burn doing nothing to settle the agitation in his gut. For the first time in his life, money was useless. He couldn't bribe his way into a four-year-old’s heart, and he couldn't negotiate with a woman who had already given up everything to keep him at bay.

​The phone on his desk chimed. A private, encrypted alert.

​Dante lunged for it.

The email was from the Zurich lab. No subject line. Just a P*F attachment protected by a twenty-four-character key.

​His fingers hovered over the keyboard. This was it. The moment the world shifted. Once he opened this file, there was no going back to the man he was yesterday. He would either be a billionaire with a failed audit, or he would be the father of three heirs to an empire that was currently being circled by vultures.

​He looked at the door to the library. He thought about Bella’s face—the cold, professional mask she had worn in the boardroom. He thought about the dinosaur drawing.

​He entered the key.

​The progress bar crawled across the screen. 10%. 30%. 70%.

​The silence in the room was absolute. Even the city outside seemed to have gone quiet, the media pressure and the corporate wars fading into the background. There was only the hum of the computer and the sound of his own heart, beating with a frantic, uncharacteristic rhythm.

​100%.

​The file opened.

Dante’s eyes moved to the bottom of the page, searching for the only number that mattered. The probability of paternity.

​He stared at the screen for a long time. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. The blue light of the monitor reflected in his eyes, turning the slate-gray to something bright and terrifying.

​Outside, in the hall, the grandfather clock struck midnight.

​Dante stood up. He didn't call Marcus. He didn't call Arthur. He walked to the window and looked out at the dark expanse of the Bedford grounds.

​The confirmation had arrived. The truth was finally in the room.

​But as he looked toward the east wing, where the lights were finally starting to go out, he realized the DNA was the easy part. The hard part was standing in the hallway of a house he owned, waiting for a woman who hated him to tell him it was okay to come inside.

​He reached for his phone and typed a single message to Bella.

​The results are in.

​He didn't hit send. Not yet. He watched the cursor blink, a small, rhythmic pulse of uncertainty in a life that had always been defined by absolutes.