Chapter 3 - Venom and Velvet
By midnight, the quadruplets were fast asleep on the massive sectional couch in the living room, wrapped in cashmere blankets I had pulled from the guest suites. They slept in a tangled pile of small limbs and quiet snores, looking so identical that even in sleep, they formed a unified whole that defied everything I thought I knew about my past.
Mara sat at the dining table, a mug of tea warming her hands. I sat across from her, the heavy silence between us filled only by the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock.
"We need a DNA test," I said quietly. Not because I doubted it—looking at those four faces was like looking into a mirror of my own childhood—but because I knew the battlefield that lay ahead. "If I am going to fight my mother, I need bulletproof armor."
"She will destroy us, Julian," Mara whispered, her knuckles white against the ceramic mug. "You don't know what she's capable of. When I was pregnant with them, I worked three jobs. I lived in a basement apartment with no heat during the winter because every time I tried to lease a decent place, the landlord suddenly backed out. Her lawyers followed me for two years."
"She won't touch you again," I swore, leaning forward until my eyes locked onto hers. "I am not the twenty-two-year-old boy who let his mother manage his life. I control forty percent of the board voting shares now. My grandfather left them directly to me when he passed three years ago. Victoria thought she was holding the reins, but I hold the foundation."
"And what about Brielle?" Mara asked, her voice dropping. "The news called it the wedding of the decade. The Cartwrights own half the real estate in New York. You think you can just walk away from that without a war?"
"Brielle doesn't love me, Mara. And I don't love her. It was a merger framed as a marriage," I said coldly. "She will be angry about the public embarrassment, but she is a businesswoman. She will survive."
My phone buzzed violently on the table. The screen illuminated with a caller ID that made the room grow cold: Victoria Whitaker.
I answered on the second ring, placing it on speaker so Mara could hear.
"Julian," my mother’s voice rang through the room, smooth as velvet, sharp as a razor. "Where are you? The Cartwrights are still at the conservatory. Do you have any idea how much effort I put into squashing the rumors that you suffered a relapse?"
"I didn't relapse, Mother," I said, my voice steady, devoid of the deference I had shown her for thirty years.
"Then explain why you stood up your own engagement party!" she snapped, her composure cracking. "Brielle is humiliated. Her father is threatening to pull his backing from the Hudson Yards project. You will come to the penthouse right now and apologize."
"I can't do that," I replied. "I'm busy."
A long pause hung on the line. "Busy with what?"
"I met four boys tonight, Victoria."
The silence on the line was instant, heavy, and absolute. For five full seconds, not even the sound of my mother's breath leaked through the speaker.
"I don't know what garbage you're talking about," she said, her voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
"They have my face," I said softly. "They have my eyes. And their mother has a scar above her left eyebrow from a bike accident when she was nineteen. Do you remember her, Victoria? The girl you lied to? The girl whose life you tried to erase?"
"Julian... listen to me very carefully," Victoria’s tone changed, dropping all affection, replaced by the icy authority of a billionaire corporate titan. "Whatever tramp has cornered you tonight is looking for a payout. She is a parasite. If you let some low-class waitress ruin the Whitaker legacy, I will have the board declare you mentally unfit before sunrise."
Mara gasped softly, but I held up a hand to quiet her.
"Try it," I said smoothly. "Because tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, a court-appointed physician is coming to my apartment to collect DNA samples. If those boys are my sons, Mother, I am going to tear down every single structure you built on lies. Starting with your seat on the board."
I hung up before she could respond.
May you like
Mara was staring at me, her chest heaving. "Julian... what have you done?"
"I just started the war," I said, looking over at the couch where four tiny boys slept peacefully. "And for the first time in my life, I'm fighting for something that actually belongs to me."
