Chapter 5 - Blood Never Lies
Duncan was out of the room before Silas could even stand up.
He took the grand staircase three steps at a time, his heart hammering against his ribs with a violence he hadn't felt in five years. "What happened?" he demanded as Anwen ran beside him, her small frame struggling to match his massive strides.
"I went down to the kitchen to get hot water for his steam cup," Anwen sobbed, the panic choking her words. "I was gone for four minutes! When I came back, the balcony door was wide open, and the bed was empty! Duncan, his IV was ripped out—there was blood on the sheet!"
They burst into the west wing suite.
The crisp morning wind was howling through the open French doors, billowing the heavy silk curtains into the room. On the bed, a small smear of bright red marked where the saline needle had been torn from the boy’s arm.
Duncan didn't waste a second panicking. His mind clicked into high-threat executive mode. "Silas! Lock the estate gates! No vehicle leaves the perimeter! Cut the power to the main road access!"
He ran to the balcony, looking down. The stone balustrade led to a decorative trellis, but it was impossible for a sick four-year-old to climb down.
Suddenly, a faint, rhythmic sound drifted through the hallway behind them.
*Click. Whir. Click.*
Duncan froze. Anwen stopped crying, her head snapping toward the corridor.
"The dumbwaiter," Duncan muttered.
At the end of the east corridor was the antique service dumbwaiter—a massive, rope-and-pulley lift used in the nineteenth century to haul luggage between the servant quarters in the attic and the basement cellars. It had been boarded up for decades, but the renovation crew had unsealed it the previous month.
Duncan sprinted down the hall, Anwen right at his heels.
He reached the wooden panel, threw the latch, and pulled the door open.
Sitting inside the dark, velvet-lined box, wrapped in a stolen cashmere throw from the hallway sofa, was Leo. His knees were pulled to his chest, his gray eyes huge in the dim light, his small thumb shoved firmly into his mouth. In his other hand, he clutched an old, silver-framed photograph he must have snatched from the gallery wall.
"Leo!" Anwen dropped to the floor, reaching in and pulling the trembling boy into her arms, burying her face in his neck as she wept hysterically. "Leo, baby, why did you do that? Why did you run away?"
Leo sniffled, pointing a tiny finger down the dark corridor toward the stairs. "The mean lady came back."
Duncan’s blood turned to liquid ice. He dropped down beside them, his voice razor-sharp. "What mean lady, Leo?"
"The lady in the green dress," Leo whispered, his voice trembling. "She came into the room. She had a man with big boots. She told him to put me in a bag. I hid in the little closet... then I found the moving box."
Duncan stood up slowly. The sheer, murderous fury radiating from his body was suffocating.
Felice hadn't left the grounds. She had gone to the staff quarters, enlisted one of her family’s private security guards who had accompanied her to the gala, and attempted to abduct the child from under his roof.
"Silas!" Duncan roared down the hall.
Silas appeared, breathing heavily, holding his phone. "Security just intercepted a black SUV at the north gate. Felice Lancaster is in the back seat. Her driver was carrying an empty pediatric transport duffel."
Anwen choked back a scream, clutching Leo so tightly the boy grunted.
Duncan walked toward Silas, his expression terrifyingly calm. "Call the state police. Call the district attorney. Tell them Arthur Lancaster’s daughter just attempted an aggravated kidnapping on Vance property."
"Duncan, wait," Silas warned, his voice low. "If you cross the Lancasters publicly before we have legal proof of paternity, Arthur will use the press to paint this as a domestic dispute. He’ll say Felice was trying to rescue the child from an unstable environment. He owns three judges in this district."
Duncan reached into Silas’s pocket and pulled out the manila envelope containing the lab requisition form.
"We won't have to wait," Duncan said.
A loud ping echoed from Silas’s phone.
Silas glanced down at the screen. The encrypted notification from Genex Diagnostics was flashing. Silas’s fingers moved across the glass, entering the security key. He opened the PDF, his eyes scanning past the thousands of genetic markers down to the final statistical conclusion.
Silas stopped breathing. He looked up at Duncan, his eyes wide with absolute, indisputable awe.
"Probability of paternity," Silas read, his voice shaking. "99.998 percent. The subject, Duncan Vance, is biologically confirmed as the father of Leo Edwards."
Duncan closed his eyes for a single second. An enormous, suffocating weight that had rested on his soul for five years shattered into dust.
He turned to Anwen.
She was sitting on the floor, holding their son, looking up at him with tears streaming down her pale, beautiful face—the face he had finally begun to see clearly through the fog of his amnesia.
"He’s your son, Duncan," she sobbed softly. "He always was."
Duncan walked over, dropped to his knees on the cold parquet floor, and wrapped his powerful arms around both of them, pulling them against his chest.
May you like
"I know," Duncan whispered, his voice breaking as he pressed a kiss to his son’s forehead, then to Anwen’s trembling lips. "And no one will ever touch my family again."
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