"Elara, have you lost your mind?" Harper hissed, looking around to make sure her assistants were out of earshot.
Elara sat on the velvet chaise, clutching a cup of cold coffee. "He's suspicious, Harper. He asked me if I was hiding someone. He's hiring private investigators. If he finds out Leo is six... he'll do the math. The Aspen trip. He'll know."
Harper picked up the shears. She was tall, edgy, with pink streaks in her hair-the rebellious Kensington. "So you want to what? Commit fraud?"
"We need to muddy the waters," Elara said, her voice trembling. "If anyone looks, he needs to be born in a different state. Or earlier. Maybe we can say he was premature? That would push the conception date back before Aspen."
"Faking medical records is a felony, El."
"He will take him away from me, Harper! You know the Sterling lawyers. They'll paint me as an unfit mother living in poverty. They'll take him to the estate and I'll never see him again."
Harper sighed, rubbing her temples. "My brother would kill me if he knew I was doing this."
"Adrian can't know," Elara said quickly. "He's already done too much."
"Fine," Harper said. "I'll see what I can do about sealing the birth records. But we can't change his age physically. He looks six. Hiding him isn't a long-term strategy, El."
"It is if we hide him in plain sight," a small voice piped up.
Leo emerged from behind a rack of silk dresses.
"Leo!" Elara scolded. "Eavesdropping is rude."
"If I'm famous," Leo said, walking over to Harper, "then Julian can't kidnap me. Too many witnesses."
Harper looked at the boy. She smirked. "The kid has a point. And he has the face for it."
She grabbed a tape measure. "I need a face for my new 'Mini-Mogul' line. If he's on billboards, everyone will assume he's a child model, not a secret heir. Sterlings don't do commercial modeling. It's too... plebeian."
"It's risky," Elara said.
"It's genius," Harper corrected.
Meanwhile, in the penthouse office of Sterling Tower.
Julian stared at the photo on his desk. It was grainy, taken with a telephoto lens.
Elara was walking into her apartment building. She was holding the hand of a child. The child was wearing a hoodie, his face turned away.
"Who is the boy?" Julian asked.
The investigator cleared his throat. "We're not sure yet, Mr. Sterling. There are no school records for a child under the name Sterling in New York."
"Is she babysitting?"
"She buys a lot of groceries for a babysitter. And... she picks him up every day at 3 PM from a private Montessori school. He's registered under the name 'Leo Vance'-her maiden name."
Julian looked up. "Vance. And who pays the tuition?"
"That's the interesting part. The payments come from a blind trust administered by the Kensington family office."
Julian's hand curled into a fist. The photo crumpled beneath his fingers.
Adrian. His rival. His enemy.
"Get me everything on Adrian Kensington," Julian said, his voice ice cold. "And find out why he's paying for a child living with my wife."
---
