The Billionaire's Hidden Heir

CHAPTER NINE

EZRA’S POV

I’ve held that photograph for maybe ten seconds, and it already feels like it’s burned itself into the inside of my skull.

Miles on a playground. Laughing. Some ordinary afternoon that should have belonged only to him and whoever was watching him at the time, and instead some man with a folder and careful handwriting was standing somewhere close enough to catch it on camera without either Nadia or the daycare or anyone else ever knowing he was there.

“He is not safe.”

Four words. No signature. No explanation. Just a threat dressed up as a warning, or a warning dressed up as a threat, and I honestly can’t tell which one scares me more.

“Ezra.” Nadia’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. “Ezra, say something.”

“We’re not staying here tonight,” I say.

“What?”

“You and Miles. You’re not staying in this apartment tonight.” I’m already moving, already thinking three steps ahead the way I think in every negotiation I’ve ever walked into, except my hands won’t stop shaking and my chest feels like someone’s standing on it. “I have a house. It has cameras on every entrance and a gate that doesn’t open for anyone who isn’t cleared. Get Miles. Pack whatever you need for a few days.”

“You want me to just pick up my son in the middle of the night and go live in your house?”

“I want you both somewhere Victor Hale can’t leave envelopes under the door.”

That lands. I watch it land. Her face goes through about six things at once — anger, fear, something that might be pride fighting to stay upright even now — and then she nods, once, sharp, and disappears down the hall toward Miles’s room.

I stand in her kitchen with the photograph still in my hand and I call the one person who might actually know what’s happening.

Marcus picks up on the second ring, which tells me he wasn’t asleep either.

“It’s late,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

“Victor Hale,” I say. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

There’s a pause on the line that lasts one second too long.

“Marcus.”

“I know the name,” he says slowly. “Your father’s people. Where did you hear it?”

“He was outside Nadia’s apartment tonight. He left a photograph of my son under her door with a note that says he’s not safe.” My voice comes out flatter than I feel, which is the only way I know how to keep talking right now. “I need you to tell me everything you know about him. Right now.”

Marcus is quiet again, and I can hear him moving, a door closing somewhere on his end, like he doesn’t want this conversation happening near anyone else in his house.

“Ezra, there’s something I should have told you eight months ago,” he says. “When your father died.”

My stomach drops before he even finishes the sentence.

“What.”

“Your father restructured his estate about three years before he passed. Most of it went where everyone expected — the company shares, the properties, all of it came to you. But there was a separate clause. A trust, technically, sitting outside the main estate, funded and dormant, with instructions that only activate under one specific condition.”

“What condition.”

“The confirmed the existence of a grandchild,” Marcus says. “Your father set it up years ago, Ezra. Before you ever met Nadia, before any of this. Victor was named the administrator. He’s not watching Nadia because someone told him to start. He’s watching her because your father’s instructions never stopped.”

I have to put my hand flat on the counter to stay upright.

“You’re telling me my father knew,” I say. “You’re telling me he set something in motion for a grandchild he never even confirmed existed.”

“I’m telling you your father planned for every version of your life he could imagine, including the ones you never told him about.” Marcus’s voice is careful now, the way it gets when he’s about to say something he knows I don’t want to hear. “There’s more, Ezra. The trust isn’t just money. There’s a custody provision attached to it. If Victor determines the child is being raised in an unstable environment, he has standing authority — under your father’s instructions, not yours, not the courts, your father’s — to petition for guardianship on the estate’s behalf.”

The room is very quiet, or maybe it’s just me, maybe the whole apartment goes quiet, and I’m the only one who notices.

.

“That’s insane,” I say. “That can’t hold up legally.”

“It might not,” Marcus says. “But Ezra, your father, spent thirty years making sure the things he wanted to happen happened, whether they were supposed to be possible. I wouldn’t bet against the machine he built just because it sounds insane out loud.”

“Did you know about this?” I asked. “When you flagged that HR file two days ago. Did you already know about the trust, and you just didn’t tell me?”

“No.” His answer comes fast, sharp, almost offended. “I found the trust document an hour ago, after you called. I’ve spent the last hour reading it instead of sleeping, Ezra, because I wanted to have real answers before I dumped this on you at midnight. I didn’t know until tonight. I swear to you, I didn’t know.”

I believe him. I have to believe him, because if I don’t, I don’t know who’s left to trust in any of this.

“Get everything on Victor Hale by morning,” I say. “Every address, every associate, every piece of paper with his name on it. I want to know exactly how much power my father actually gave this man before I let him anywhere near my son.”

“I’ll have it by six,” Marcus says, and hangs up.

I look up and Nadia is standing in the hallway with Miles asleep against her shoulder, one small hand curled into the collar of her shirt, and she’s watching my face with an expression that tells me she already knows, before I say a single word, that whatever I just heard is worse than anything that happened tonight so far.

“Ezra,” she says quietly. “What did he say?”

I lower the phone from my ear.

I open my mouth to answer her, and that’s when my phone buzzes again in my hand — not Marcus calling back, a new number, one I don’t recognize, and underneath it, on the screen, a single line of text that arrives before I can even decide whether to answer.

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