Gavin POV:
"Daddy, why does Mommy Iliana say we came from her tummy?"
Kenneth's voice was small, innocent, yet the words hit me with the force of a freight train.
I froze, my hand hovering over the Lego tower we were building. The silence in the room was sudden, absolute, and suffocating.
I looked down at my son, my pulse thundering in my ears. "What did you say?"
"Mommy Iliana," he repeated, his attention never wavering from the plastic bricks. "She told Kaylynn and me that we are hers. She said Mommy Alex isn't our real mommy."
The oxygen seemed to vanish from the room.
For six years, I had swallowed the lie. For six years, I had believed Alex was the mother of my children, the woman who had birthed them, the woman who had failed to bond with them.
But Iliana?
I stood up abruptly. My knee clipped the table, and the Lego tower crashed to the floor, shattering into a hundred pieces.
I didn't bother to pick it up. I walked out of the playroom, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I needed to breathe. I needed the truth.
I dialed Henderson immediately. The trust fund manager answered on the second ring, his voice trembling slightly the moment he saw my caller ID.
"Mr. Dudley," he stammered.
"The trust fund," I said, my voice dangerously low, barely a growl. "Who is the biological mother listed on the twins' birth certificates? Do not lie to me, Henderson. Or I will burn your career and your reputation to the ground."
There was a pause. A long, heavy silence that told me everything I needed to know.
"It's... it's Ms. Iliana Dudley, sir," Henderson whispered, terror leaking through the line. "It always was."
The phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the desk.
Iliana.
My cousin. My first love. The woman who claimed she only wanted to be a 'good aunt.'
A wave of violent nausea rolled over me.
If Iliana was the mother, then Alex... God, Alex was innocent.
Alex had been telling the truth. Alex had been forced into a role she never asked for, treated like a pariah in her own home for failing to love children that weren't hers.
And I had let it happen.
Rage, hot and blinding, flooded my veins. But beneath the rage was something colder. Fear.
I called my head of security. "Find Rico. Now. And get me everything on Iliana's movements for the last six months. Bank transfers, phone logs, everything."
It took three hours. Three hours of pacing my office, staring at the city skyline that suddenly looked like a prison of glass and steel.
When the file landed on my desk, it was damning.
Large cash withdrawals. Calls to burner phones. A direct link to a mercenary group known for kidnapping and 'disposal.'
And then, they brought Rico in.
He was handcuffed to the metal table in the private interrogation room I kept for corporate espionage. His face was bruised, swollen from the 'welcome' my team had given him, but he was smiling.
"You're too late, Gavin," Rico spat, a mixture of saliva and blood staining his teeth.
I slammed my hands on the table, the metal rattling under the impact. "Where is she? Where is Alex?"
"She's gone," Rico laughed, a wet, gurgling sound. "But she didn't jump, you arrogant prick. She didn't commit suicide because you broke her heart."
He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with pure malice.
"Iliana paid me fifty grand to strap a bomb vest to her chest. She paid me to blow your wife into pieces."
My knees gave out. I stumbled back, gripping the edge of the table to keep from collapsing.
The world tilted on its axis.
Iliana didn't just lie. She didn't just manipulate.
She was a murderer.
And I was her accomplice.
