Chapter 2 - Three Small BeatsLess than two weeks after moving into a modest two-bedroom apartment in Boston, I woke up with a deep, bone-rattling nausea.
At first, I assumed it was the lingering poison of stress. My entire life had been upended. I was twenty-eight, living under my maiden name again, and trying to reconstruct a reality that didn't involve armed guards standing at my front door or reading about my husband's "business ventures" in quiet crime columns.
When the morning sickness persisted into the second week, I bought three home tests at a local pharmacy.
All three turned positive before the timer even reached sixty seconds.
My hands shook so violently I dropped the plastic strips onto the bathroom tile. Pregnant. I was pregnant with the child of a man who had replaced me with a politician's daughter, a man who had handed me divorce papers over coffee without looking me in the eye.
The following Monday, I sat in a dimly lit examination room at a private obstetric clinic in suburban Boston. The air smelled faintly of lavender and rubbing alcohol.
"Alright, Claire, let's take a look," Dr. Aris Thorne said kindly, spreading cool clear gel across my lower abdomen.
She placed the ultrasound transducer against my skin. The black-and-white monitor flickered to life, showing a dark, cavernous space.
Dr. Thorne went completely still. She adjusted her glasses, moved the transducer two centimeters to the left, and then froze again.
"Dr. Thorne?" My heart began to hammer against my ribs. "Is something wrong? Is there no heartbeat?"
"No," Dr. Thorne said softly, turning the screen toward me. Her voice carried a mixture of awe and professional caution. "There isn't a heartbeat, Claire. There are three."
I stared at the screen.
"Three?" I whispered.
"Gestational sac one, two, and three," she pointed out with the tip of a pen, highlighting three distinct, tiny flickering lights in the dark gray space. "Triplets. Identical triplets. They share a placenta, but they have separate amniotic sacs. It’s exceedingly rare, especially without fertility treatments."
Three.
I lay back against the paper-covered examination table, tears spilling silently over my temples and soaking into my hair. Three babies. Three tiny lives growing inside me, completely unaware that their father was Gabriel Cross—the most feared underboss in the Northeast syndicate.
"Does the father know?" Dr. Thorne asked gently, handing me a tissue.
I looked at the tiny, rhythmic flashes of light on the screen. I thought of Gabriel's office. I thought of Serena Vale sitting on his desk. I thought of the brutal, violent world Gabriel inhabited—a world where children were targets, leverage, and pawns in bloody territorial wars.
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If Gabriel found out, he would take them. He would surround them with bulletproof glass, armed bodyguards, and the ruthless expectations of the Cross dynasty. They would grow up learning how to check a car for explosives before learning how to ride a bicycle. And worse, they would grow up wondering if their father loved them, or if they were merely an extension of his power while Serena Vale played stepmother in his penthouse.
"No," I said, wiping my face. My voice was suddenly firm, forged in an absolute, fierce maternal instinct I hadn't known I possessed. "The father isn't in the picture. He will never know."
