Chapter 3 - The Father on the Avenue
Ethan Vance did not look like a man who had accepted defeat.
He stood broad-shouldered, rain streaming down his carved jawline, his silver-flecked dark hair soaked by the storm. His dark eyes—the same hazel-flecked eyes that Lily carried—burned with an ancient, volcanic wrath that made Victoria’s remaining security guards freeze in their tracks.
“Ethan…” Victoria gasped, struggling against his grip, her knees scraping the wet stone. “Ethan, let go of me! This is a public street!”
Ethan did not release her. He twisted her wrist by a fraction of an inch, forcing her further down until her designer coat touched the dirty gutter water:
“Four years, Victoria,” Ethan spoke.
His voice was a low, subterranean rumble that rattled the shopfront windows:
“Four years Clara and I spent walking the streets of this city. Four years of private investigators, four years of empty nurseries, four years of waking up to the sound of my wife weeping in the dark.”
Ethan turned his head.
He saw Clara standing beneath the awning, holding the little girl in the pink raincoat.
He saw Lily’s hazel eyes looking back at him.
He saw the matching red star birthmark on the child’s small wrist.
The iron mask on the titan’s face fractured into a thousand pieces of raw, agonizing love.
Ethan released Victoria, letting her slump onto the pavement. He crossed the three strides to the bench, dropping to both knees in the pouring rain, his massive arms wrapping around both Clara and Lily simultaneously.
“Lily…” Ethan choked out, hot, heavy tears breaking from his eyes, washing through the rain on his cheeks. “My baby… my sweet, beautiful girl…”
Lily touched his rough, wet jaw with her small thumb, her face lighting up with an instinctive, unbreakable recognition:
“Daddy? You’re the man from the drawing under my pillow!”
Clara buried her face against Ethan’s shoulder, her entire body wracked with deep, cleansing sobs:
“We found her, Ethan… God Almighty, we found her…”
Victoria scrambled to her feet behind them, her hair coming loose from its pins, screaming at the two private security guards who had finally caught up:
“What are you waiting for, you idiots?! Shoot him! Take the girl! I pay your salaries!”
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The two guards looked at Ethan Vance.
Then they looked at the six unmarked black Cadillac Suburbans that had just roared onto Fifth Avenue, mounting the sidewalk, sirens blaring as twenty heavily armed tactical operators from the Vance Sovereign Directorate stepped into the rain with their weapons raised at low-ready.
