Chapter 2 - A Door Locked from the Outside
The silence that followed Grace’s question was heavier than the storm outside.
“Yes,” Sebastian said, his voice dropping into a register that made the blood run cold in her veins. “Because I know who I am, Grace. And I know what people want when they get close to me. You were supposed to be different.”
“I was different,” Grace replied, her voice steady despite the tears tracking down her cheeks. “I never asked you for a dime. I never asked to meet your business associates, I never asked for designer clothes, and I never asked for a piece of your empire. When I stayed with you, it was because I cared about you—not the money, not the penthouse, not the fear you instill in everyone else.”
“And now you come here with a piece of paper and an impossible claim,” Sebastian said, stepping over the torn fragments of the ultrasound without looking down. “Tell me, how much is this baby supposed to cost me?”
Grace felt as though she had been struck in the chest with a physical force. The pain was acute, sharp, and instantly clarifying. Whatever warm, vulnerable man she had held in her small apartment at two in the morning during his darkest hours had been completely swallowed by the ruthless billionaire who ruled the Chicago underworld.
“It will cost you nothing,” Grace whispered. She wrapped her coat tighter around herself, her hand remaining firmly pressed over her belly. “Not one cent. I didn’t come here to ask for child support or a payoff, Sebastian. I came here because I believed you had a right to know that a life we made together exists. I thought… God forgive me, I thought you might be happy.”
Sebastian stood frozen near the bar, his hand still clamped around the crystal glass of untouched whiskey. For a split second, a look of profound, agonizing conflict crossed his sharp features, but he buried it beneath a mask of absolute indifference.
“If you leave this room with this story,” Sebastian warned, “you leave alone. Don't call me. Don't contact my office. Don't bring my name into Mercy Lake Children’s Hospital. If you try to use my name to secure a future, my lawyers will dismantle your life before you can even step into a courtroom.”
Grace looked at him for a long, heartbreaking moment. She saw the vast, empty beauty of his penthouse, the expensive art on the walls, and the terrible, suffocating loneliness he chose every single day.
“You don't need lawyers to keep me away, Sebastian,” Grace said softly. “You’ve already made sure I’ll never want to see you again.”
She turned on her heel and walked toward the private elevator. The doors slid open with a soft chime. Before stepping inside, she turned back one last time. Sebastian hadn't moved; he stood like a statue carved from black marble in the middle of his empty palace.
“Goodbye, Sebastian,” she said.
The elevator doors closed, cutting off her view of him forever. Or so she believed.
When Grace stepped out into the biting Chicago rain, the cold air hit her lungs like glass. She walked three blocks to the bus stop, her shoes soaking through, her body trembling with exhaustion and sorrow. Sitting on the wooden bench beneath a flickering streetlamp, she pulled her hand beneath her coat and pressed her fingers gently against her stomach.
“It’s just you and me now,” she whispered into the storm. “And I promise you, that will be more than enough.”
Back in the penthouse, Sebastian stood in silence long after the elevator had left. The storm rattled the heavy glass panes. Slowly, against his own will, his eyes drifted down to the floor. The torn pieces of the black-and-white ultrasound lay scattered across the polished dark hardwood.
He told himself to leave them for the cleaning staff. He told himself it was a scam, a desperate play by a woman who had finally realized how rich he truly was. But his feet moved anyway.
Sebastian knelt on the floor. With fingers that were usually steady enough to handle firearms and sign multi-million-dollar contracts, he picked up the shredded paper. He aligned the edges on his knee. The tiny, curved white shape reappeared in the dark background—a fragile, microscopic life.
A memory flashed in his mind: seven years ago, a top specialist in London telling him after an injury-induced infection that he was entirely sterile. “Zero sperm count, Mr. Rourke. You will never biological father a child.” He had accepted it back then as a matter-of-fact reality of his violent life. It had suited him; it meant he would never leave an heir vulnerable to his enemies.
So why did the sight of this tiny picture make his heart feel like it was being squeezed in a vise?
He shoved the torn pieces into his jacket pocket, stood up, and called his chief of security, Viktor.
“Sir?” Viktor answered on the first ring.
“Grace Halley just left the building,” Sebastian said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “Put a discrete tail on her. I want to know where she goes, who she speaks to, and every bank transaction she makes. If anyone approaches her—anyone from the Moretti family or our internal rivals—you handle it immediately.”
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“Understood, boss. Do you want her brought back?”
“No,” Sebastian snapped. “Just watch her.”
