Chapter 3 - The Blood Line
By sunrise, the rain had cleared, leaving the estate wrapped in a freezing gray fog off Lake Michigan.
The family floor was quiet. I sat in the armchair beside Ava’s bed, watching her chest rise and fall rhythmically. Harper was curled up on the small settee near the window, holding a cold cup of tea, her eyes wide and bloodshot.
The door opened softly, and Emma slid into the room. She was wearing her pink fleece pajamas, barefoot, her small hand clutching a wooden drawing board.
She didn't go to me. She walked straight to the side of Ava’s bed, pulled herself up onto the edge, and laid her drawing flat on the blanket.
I leaned over to look at it.
It was a crayon sketch of our house. But instead of the usual dark black lines she had drawn for three years, there were four people standing on the front lawn. Ava, Harper, Emma, and a tall woman with blue gloves and brown hair. Above them, Emma had drawn a massive, thick red wall blocking out a cloud of black smoke.
“She drawn mountains,” Emma whispered, her small voice scratchy from years of disuse.
I froze. I knelt beside the bed, placing my hand over Emma’s small shoulder.
“What did you say, sweetie?” I asked softly, my chest tightening.
Emma pointed her finger at Claire, who had just stepped into the bedroom carrying a tray of fresh medical dressing, surgical scissors, and clean saline solution.
“Claire makes the dark things go away,” Emma whispered, looking up at the maid.
Claire stopped in her tracks. Her professional, stoic mask cracked for a fraction of a second, her throat working as she swallowed hard against an unexpected wave of emotion.
She set the tray down on the bedside table, knelt beside Emma, and gently tucked a strand of hair behind my daughter's ear.
“I’ll always stay right here, Emma,” Claire promised softly. “Nobody enters this house while I’m awake.”
Ava let out a soft groan on the bed, her eyelids fluttering open as the pain meds began to wear off.
“Dad?” Ava croaked out, her lips dry.
“I’m right here, baby,” I said, taking her hand.
Ava looked past me toward Claire, her eyes widening slightly as memories of the night came flooding back. “The... the bullet. Thomas...”
“Thomas is gone,” I said flatly. “The house is secure. Claire saved your life, Ava.”
Ava looked at Claire’s forearms, where the scars were fully visible beneath her pushed-up sleeves.
“You’re not a maid, are you?” Ava whispered.
Claire reached down, expertly checking the tension on Ava’s thigh bandage without causing her pain.
“I’m your doctor now,” Claire said with a soft, rare smile. “Which means you’re under my strict orders to stay in this bed, eat Rosa’s chicken broth, and stop trying to hack your father’s security servers at two in the morning.”
Ava let out a weak, breathy laugh that ended in a small tear rolling down her cheek. “I was trying to find out who was wire-transferring money from the dock accounts. That’s why Thomas shot at me.”
Claire looked up at me, her eyes darkening. “What did you find, Ava?”
Ava swallowed hard, looking at me with deep guilt. “It wasn't just Julian Vance, Dad. The wire authorization codes used to open the dock gates in Miami... they didn't come from Thomas’s terminal.”
I leaned forward, my knuckles turning white against the bedpost. “Whose terminal did they come from?”
“Uncle Dominic’s,” Ava whispered.
The air in the bedroom instantly turned to ice.
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Dominic Vale was my younger brother—the man who controlled our family’s legal real estate portfolio, sat on the board of three private banks, and had stood beside me at my wife’s funeral three years ago, weeping into his hands while promising to help me raise my daughters.
My own blood had signed the warrant for my children.
