Chapter 4 - The Shield of the Four
The slap was not loud, but it was absolute.
It was not physical. It was the concussive sound of Wyatt Northcott stepping directly into Celeste’s path, his towering six-foot-two frame cutting off her advance with the unyielding density of an iron bulkhead.
Celeste stopped, her designer heels clicking sharply on the marble, her eyebrows drawing together in sharp, offended disbelief. "Wyatt. Step aside. I am your mother."
"You are not my mother," Wyatt said.
His voice was terrifyingly calm, devoid of theatrical shouting, carrying the exact, subterranean gravity that Damon had spent twenty years instilling in him.
"You are a biological donor who sold four children for twenty million pieces of silver in Monaco," Wyatt continued, looking down into her porcelain face with pure, clinical contempt. "This woman sitting behind me—the woman you just called a charity case—sat beside my bed in Presbyterian Hospital for fourteen nights when I had spinal meningitis at age eleven. She bathed my forehead, she held my hands when the fevers made me scream, and she refused to leave the room even when the doctors told her the contagion might kill her."
Delaney stepped up beside her brother, her dark eyes flashing with unshakeable fire.
"When I had my first panic attack at fourteen," Delaney said, her voice ringing through the vaulted ceiling, "Eliza sat on the floor of my closet for six hours in the dark, holding me against her chest, singing that stupid lullaby until my breathing slowed. You were in Cannes buying diamonds with money stolen from our college trusts."
Micah moved to Wyatt’s other side, his broad shoulders locking into an impenetrable wall of living muscle.
"When I blew out my knee in the state championship game," Micah growled, his jaw ticking, "my father was in London closing a shipping merger. You were on a yacht in Ibiza. Eliza drove the truck to the hospital, carried me into the trauma bay herself, and slept in the plastic waiting chair for three days."
Phoebe stepped out from behind Eliza’s chair.
The eighteen-year-old was no longer trembling. Her chin was lifted, her eyes wide, clear, and burning with a fierce, radiant dignity that made Celeste involuntarily take half a step backward.
Phoebe reached into her cardigan pocket, pulling out a small, tarnished silver locket shaped like an antique compass.
"You gave me this when I was four years old, Celeste," Phoebe whispered. "You told me that if I ever felt lost, I should open it and look at your picture."
Phoebe opened the silver clasp.
With two fingers, she ripped the tiny, faded portrait of Celeste out of the casing, dropping the paper onto the wet marble floor, and ground it beneath the heel of her boot.
"Eliza is my mother," Phoebe said, each word falling like lead onto stone. "She carried our family when my father was cold and you were gone. And if you think you can touch her, or touch our baby brother, you are going to find out what kind of monsters you left behind in this house."
Celeste stared at the four young adults standing before her in an unbroken phalanx.
For the first time in forty-eight years, the sociopathic, polished mask of her vanity cracked. Her chest heaved beneath the sable coat, her painted lips parting in genuine, disbelieving horror as she realized that her twenty million dollars, her Swiss decrees, and her biological claims meant less than dust to the four people she had thought she could command.
"Damon!" Celeste shrieked, turning her head toward the fireplace, her voice cracking into a ragged, desperate rasp. "Are you going to let these ungrateful brats speak to me like this? Control your children!"
Damon Northcott did not move from the hearth.
He looked at the four heirs who had defied him in the library two hours earlier. He looked at the woman sitting in the wing chair, holding her pregnant stomach, surrounded by four children who had chosen her over wealth, over legacy, and over fear.
And for the first time in thirteen years, Damon Northcott understood the magnitude of the empire he had nearly thrown away.
"They are not my children, Celeste," Damon said softly, his baritone vibrating through the room like an incoming storm.
May you like
Celeste blinked, stunned. "What?"
"They are Eliza's children," Damon whispered. "And you have sixty seconds to leave this property before I have my men bury you in the woods behind the chapel."
