Chapter 4 - The First Dinner
The private suite at the Four Seasons was quiet, bathed in the soft glow of floor lamps and overlooking the twinkling skyline of Philadelphia.
Room service had arrived twenty minutes ago. The silver cloches had revealed roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, steaming mac and cheese, and a platter of fresh berries. Leo and Toby were sitting on the plush carpet by the low coffee table, eating with an enthusiasm that spoke volumes about how long it had been since their last real meal.
"They have your appetite," Rosalind murmured from the sofa. She had taken off her worn boots, tucking her stockinged feet beneath her. In the soft light, stripped of the airport’s harsh glare, she looked both ethereal and painfully weary.
"They eat like wolves," I smiled softly, sitting in the armchair opposite her. I held a glass of water, having declined the wine the hotel offered. My mind needed to be razor-sharp tonight.
"Toby eats everything. Leo picks out the carrots," she said, watching them with an expression of pure, unadulterated devotion. "You used to do that."
"I still do," I admitted.
A brief, fragile silence fell between us—a bridge suspended across six years of silence.
"Why didn't you hire a private investigator, Chris?" she asked suddenly, her voice dropping so the boys wouldn't hear over the cartoon playing on the muted television. "When I disappeared from our apartment, did you really think I just stopped loving you?"
The question felt like a blade sliding between my ribs.
"I came back from London three days early to surprise you," I said, remembering the suffocating hollow in my gut that afternoon. "The apartment was empty. The key was on the counter with your ring. And there was a note."
Rosalind’s eyes widened. "A note? I never left a note."
"It said you realized our worlds were too different. That you couldn't handle the pressure of my family, that you had met someone else from your past and you were moving west." I closed my eyes, the memory still burning. "It was in your handwriting."
"Your mother," Rosalind breathed, horror painting her face. "She took my journals from the apartment while I was at my shift. She must have had someone copy my script."
"I spent three months looking for you," I said, leaning forward. "Hired two separate agencies. Both came back with dead ends, saying you had taken a train to California and changed your contact info. Later, I found out my mother had recommended both agencies to me. She controlled the flow of information from day one."
Rosalind pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead, stifling a sob. "She made me feel like an insect, Christopher. When I went to her estate, after I found out I was pregnant... she had the gate guards search my bag. She told me I was trying to trap the Vance heir. She looked at my belly and said, *'Bastards have no claim on a dynasty.'*"
My blood ran cold. The rage that surged through me wasn't hot or loud; it was freezing, calculating, absolute.
"She said that to you?"
"She made me sign that paper, Chris. She told me if I walked away quietly, she would give me ten thousand dollars to start over. If I refused, she promised she would have the city health department inspect my mother’s old house, find code violations, and make sure any children I had were remanded to foster custody the day they were born." Rosalind shuddered. "I didn't take the money. I took the bus to Pennsylvania and never looked back."
I looked at the boys. Toby was offering a strawberry to his brother, both of them giggling at some quiet joke.
Ten thousand dollars. My mother spent more than that on floral arrangements for her annual autumn gala.
"Tomorrow," I said, my voice steady as iron, "we take a paternity test."
Rosalind looked offended for half a second before I held up a hand.
May you like
"Not for me," I said gently. "I know they are mine. I see it in their faces, their eyes, their gestures. But the state needs to know. The courts need to know. Because when Eleanor Vance finds out I’ve found you, she will use every weapon in her arsenal to destroy you. And I need a shield made of legal steel."
***
