The Billionaire's Hidden Heir

CHAPTER TEN

EZRA’S POV

I stare at the message until the words stop making sense as words and just become shapes on a screen.

We need to discuss custody of the boy before this becomes a courtroom matter. — V.H.

“Ezra,” Nadia shifts Miles higher against her shoulder, and even asleep, he makes a small sound of protest, the kind kids make when they’re moved without waking up all the way. “What is it. Tell me right now.”

I turn the phone around so she can see it. I watched her read it once, then a second time, like the first pass didn’t fully land, and then I watched her face do something I hadn’t seen her do all night. Not fear. Something colder than fear.

“He’s not even hiding what he wants anymore,” she says quietly. “He’s not pretending this is a welfare check. He’s telling us he’s coming for custody.”

“He doesn’t have grounds for custody.”

“He left a photograph of my son under my door at ten o’clock at night, Ezra. He tried my doorknob. Does that sound like a man who cares about grounds?”

She’s right, and I hate that she’s right, and I hate more that somewhere underneath the fear on her face there’s exhaustion too, the kind that’s been building for six years and just found a brand-new reason to get worse.

“We’re leaving,” I say. “Now. I’m not answering this text standing in your kitchen at midnight with Miles ten feet away from a door that clearly isn’t as locked as we thought it was.”

She doesn’t argue. That scares me almost as much as the message did, because Nadia argues about everything. Nadia has spent five years arguing with homeowners and shift managers and her own sister just to keep her head above water, and the fact that she just nods and turns toward the door with Miles still asleep against her shoulder tells me exactly how frightened she actually is underneath all that steadiness.

I grabbed the bag she packed earlier, slugged it over one shoulder, and followed her out into the hallway. It’s empty. No Victor. No folder waiting on the floor. Just a fluorescent light humming overhead and the stairwell door swinging shut on its own weight at the far end, the same door I heard him disappear through an hour ago.

We take the stairs instead of the elevator. I don’t say why and she doesn’t ask. We both just seem to understand, without needing to put it into words, that neither of us wants to be standing still in a small metal box right now.

My car is parked crooked against the curb where I abandoned it, the driver's door still hanging open the way I left it when I ran up here. I get Miles settled in the back seat, still asleep, still clutching that ragged stuffed dinosaur he never lets go of, and Nadia climbs in beside him instead of taking the front seat, one hand resting on his small chest like she’s checking, every few seconds, that he’s still breathing.

I pull away from the curb and I keep checking the mirrors more than I check the road ahead.

“Are you going to answer him?” she asks from the back seat. “Victor. Are you going to text him back?”

“Not tonight. Tonight I want you and Miles somewhere safe, and I want six hours to find out exactly what my father actually gave this man the legal right to do.” I glance at her in the mirror. “Tomorrow I’m calling a family lawyer. A real one. Not Marcus, not anyone from the acquisition side. Someone who only does this.”

“You keep saying tomorrow, like tomorrow is far away,” she says. “He knows what school Miles is starting in September, Ezra. That’s not a man working on tomorrow's timeline. That’s a man who’s already three steps ahead of us.”

I don’t have an answer for that, so I don’t try to fake one.

We drive in silence for a while. The city thins out the further we get from her building, streetlights spacing further apart, the noise of traffic fading into something quieter and darker, and somewhere around the fourth quiet block I hear her voice again, smaller this time, aimed less at me and more at the window.

“I keep thinking about what Dara said. Victor asked about Miles’s school. That he'd never asked something like that before.” She’s quiet for a second. “What changed, Ezra? What actually changed two weeks ago that made a man who’s been quietly checking in for two years suddenly show up at my door with a photograph and a threat?”

And that’s when it hits me, the thing I should have put together an hour ago, sitting there listening to Marcus explain a trust I never knew existed.

“The acquisition,” I say slowly. “The hotel chain. That’s when my legal team found your HR file. That’s when the flag went up in our system.” My hands tighten on the wheel. “Nadia, if my legal team’s search pinged something in a database somewhere, Victor could have a flag with the exact same information. If his monitoring is tied to any of the same public or financial records, mine is—”

“He found out the same week you did.”

“He found out the same week I did,” I repeat, and the words taste like something going wrong in real time. “Which means this isn’t him circling for two years and finally deciding to act. This is him reacting. Fast. Which means whatever he’s planning, he’s rushing it, because he thinks he’s running out of time before I get organized enough to stop him.”

Nadia goes very still in the back seat.

“Ezra,” she says, and her voice has dropped to almost nothing. “If he’s rushing, that means he’s not going to wait for tomorrow either.”

My phone buzzes again in the cupholder, the screen lighting up the dark car, and this time it isn’t text.

It’s a call. Same unknown number. And underneath it, on the screen, a second line I hadn’t noticed until right now, small and easy to miss unless you’re looking for it, tells me exactly how close Victor Hale already is.