Chapter 5 - The Hidden Truth
Hearing the words out loud sent a jolt through Elias’s entire body. Three daughters. He had three seven-year-old girls who shared his blood, while he had been raising Leo alone in a cramped Brooklyn apartment, struggling to pay rent every month.
"Why didn't you look for me after your father died?" Elias asked, his voice a mix of anger, grief, and awe. "You have billions of dollars, Camila. You could have found me in a day!"
"I wanted to!" Camila cried out, rain catching the edges of her face. "God, Elias, I wanted to so badly! But my father’s will contained a clause: if any scandal regarding the legitimacy of my heirs emerged before the children turned eight, control of Montgomery Logistics would revert entirely to Arthur. Arthur is a monster, Elias. He would have liquidated the company, bankrupted the foundation, and stripped the girls of their protection."
She looked down at her hands. "I had to protect them first. I kept a sketch of you—the one I drew while you were sleeping that night in Seattle—locked in my safe. It was all I had left of you. Every time I looked at the girls, I saw you in them. Regina has your stubbornness, Valerie has your eyes, and Lucy... Lucy has your quiet focus."
"And now?" Elias asked stepped closer to her, his voice dropping. "Arthur knows."
"Arthur suspects," Camila corrected him. "He's trying to push me into a corner so I'll step down before the annual shareholder meeting next month. He used those men today to try and get a DNA sample from the girls."
Elias’s blood ran cold. "He was trying to test them?"
"Yes," Camila said, looking up at him with desperation. "If he proves they aren't the product of an approved aristocratic marriage or a legally declared heir line according to the trust’s archaic rules, he can freeze my assets and take guardianship of the trust."
"He's not touching those girls," Elias said sharply, his protective instincts surging. "And what about Leo?"
Camila blinked, caught off guard. "Leo?"
"My son," Elias said softly. "He's six. His mother walked out on us when he was an infant. He's... he's their half-brother, Camila."
Camila’s breath hitched, a soft, overwhelmed gasp escaping her lips. "A son... You have a son?"
"Yes," Elias said, a faint smile breaking through his serious expression. "His name is Leo. He’s a good kid. Smart, funny, loves dinosaurs. And he has no idea he has three older sisters."
Camila covered her face with her hands, weeping softly. The weight of eight years of secrets, lies, and corporate warfare seemed to crash down on her all at once. Elias stepped forward and did what he had wanted to do since seeing her in the ballroom: he pulled her into a warm, firm embrace. Camila clung to him, burying her face in his chest, her tears soaking into his jacket.
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"We're going to fix this," Elias whispered into her hair. "Together. I'm not running away, and I'm not letting Arthur hurt our kids."
As they stood together on the rain-swept pier, a shadow watched them from inside a black sedan parked fifty yards away. A camera lens clicked quietly through a cracked window, capturing photographs of the CEO of Montgomery Logistics holding a construction worker from Brooklyn.
