He stared at the two infants, his mind racing to reconcile the image of the woman who had supposedly betrayed his empire with the mother now holding his children.
The Hidden Truth
“You tried to tell me?” Grant repeated, his voice low and jagged. “I had my team looking for you for months, Mara. You vanished without a trace right after the board leveled those accusations. What was I supposed to think?”
Mara’s eyes didn’t waver, though the exhaustion was etched into every line of her face. “I didn’t vanish to hide from the law, Grant. I vanished to hide from you. I sent a letter to your private residence—the one in the Berkshires—three weeks after I left. I told you I was pregnant. I told you I was at my aunt’s place in Maine.”
Grant felt a cold chill wash over him. He hadn’t stepped foot in the Berkshire house since the divorce began; he had left the management of that property to his family’s estate lawyers.
A New War
“I never got that letter,” Grant admitted, the realization hollowing out his chest. He looked at the baby in her right arm—the one with his furrowed brow. “Mara, if my family or the board intercepted that…”
“Then they knew,” Mara finished for him, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and fury. “They knew I was carrying the heirs to Waverly Therapeutics while they were busy painting me as a corporate spy to keep you from coming after me. They didn’t just want me gone, Grant. They wanted you isolated.”
Grant reached out, his fingers hovering just inches from the hospital bed. The biotech empire he had built suddenly felt like a cage of his own making. He looked at Leo and Maya—the names Mara had whispered as they drifted back to sleep—and knew that the legal battle for his company was nothing compared to the war he was about to wage to protect the family he never knew he had.
