Part 2: I never told my Mafia ex-husband about my triplets. Then one of my sons pointed at him across a Manhattan ballroom and asked, “Is that our dad?”

The silence in the grand ballroom of the Plaza Hotel was absolute. The clinking of champagne flutes had stopped. The orchestra had faded into an awkward hum.

Gabriel did not blink. His towering, six-foot-three frame stood frozen before Serena, radiating a lethal chill that could freeze blood.

“I asked you a question, Serena,” Gabriel’s voice was dangerously low, a soft growl that made the security guards at the perimeter instinctively stiffen. “How long have you known about my children?”

Serena’s polished, socialite mask shattered. Her chest heaved against her emerald silk dress. “Gabriel, please... not here. Everyone is watching. We can handle this privately—”

“Answer me!” Gabriel roared.

The sound ricocheted off the gilded ceilings. Half the high-society guests took a collective step back.

My three boys—Liam, Noah, and Caleb—tucked themselves tighter against my legs. Noah, the middle triplet, reached up and gripped my trembling hand. “Mommy,” he whispered, his little voice trembling. “Is that man angry at us?”

“No, sweetheart,” I choked out, wrapping my arms defensively around their small shoulders. “Look at me. Don't look at them.”

Gabriel’s eyes snapped toward my voice. The moment his gaze locked onto the boys, the sheer, murderous fury in his gray-green eyes melted into raw, agonizing shock. It was as if a physical blow had struck his heart.

“Five years,” Serena suddenly stammered, her voice cracking. “I... I found the clinic records five years ago, Gabriel! Right after the divorce was finalized! But she ran away! She disappeared to Ohio! She abandoned you!”

“She didn't abandon me,” Gabriel said softly, though the words were sharp as broken glass. “I sent her away. Because of *you*.”

“Gabriel, listen to me!” Serena lunged forward, grabbing his lapel, but Gabriel peeled her fingers off him with disgust, as if she were vermin.

“Marco,” Gabriel commanded without turning around.

From the shadows near the ballroom exit, his right-hand man stepped forward. Marco had been Gabriel’s enforcer since the day Gabriel took over the Romano family syndicate.

“Take Miss Vance into the holding office downstairs,” Gabriel instructed, cold as ice. “No phones. No lawyers. Strip her of every electronic device she owns. If she opens her mouth before I get down there, make sure she never speaks in Manhattan again.”

“Gabriel, no! You can’t do this to me! My father is a senator!” Serena shrieked as two stone-faced guards seized her arms and dragged her across the marble floor.

Gabriel ignored her screams. Slowly, deliberately, he turned back to me and his sons.

The ballroom patrons watched in stunned silence as the most feared mafia kingpin on the Eastern Seaboard sank to his knees on the polished floor, bringing himself down to eye level with three little boys who possessed his exact face.

“Hi,” Gabriel whispered, his voice trembling in a way I had never heard in the seven years I had known him.

Liam, the oldest by four minutes, tilted his head, his tiny brow furrowing in the identical stubborn line that Gabriel wore. “Are you a prince?”