Chapter 1 - My Mother Comes First
“PLEASE COME HOME! OUR BABY IS IN DANGER!”
Hannah Sullivan heard the terror in her own voice bounce against the marble walls of the mansion, but the man on the other end of the call sounded as annoyed as if she had interrupted a golf game.
“Stop being dramatic,” Brent snapped over the music and laughter behind him. “My mom comes first tonight.”
The call ended before Hannah could explain that she was thirty-nine weeks pregnant, alone, and feeling a pressure unlike anything she had experienced during months of carefully monitored appointments.
She stared at her phone, expecting it to ring again because surely a husband could not hear those words and simply return to his mother's birthday party.
But the screen stayed dark, and another contraction bent her forward beside the staircase, one hand braced against the polished banister as she fought to draw a full breath.
Outside the enormous windows, October rain streamed across the lawn of the Connecticut estate that Brent loved to call proof they had finally made it.
Hannah had never called it home, not really; the house possessed everything money could buy except a room where she felt permitted to make a mistake.
Her hospital bag waited by the door, packed with the tiny yellow sweater she had knitted and a photograph of the woman who had raised her, now gone for almost six years.
She had called Brent twice that afternoon because she felt unwell, and both times he had sent a message telling her not to embarrass him in front of his mother's guests.
Vivian Sullivan's sixty-fifth birthday mattered to the family because a senior executive from Brent's company might attend, and Vivian had spent three weeks organizing the expensive evening.
Apparently the arrival of Vivian's first grandchild ranked lower than the imported flowers, the champagne tower, and her place at the head of the table.
“Okay, little one,” Hannah whispered toward her belly. “We're going to get help.”
She tried the emergency number but had to steady herself against the wall as pain swept through her back; when the dispatcher answered, Hannah gave the address in broken phrases.
The dispatcher told her to stay on the line, unlock the front door if she safely could, and avoid moving more than necessary.
Hannah managed to turn the lock, but her trembling hand caught the corner of a narrow hall table as she lowered herself beside it.
The porcelain vase toppled and struck the floor with a thunderous crack, scattering white lilies and unopened envelopes around her bare feet.
She flinched at the sound because Vivian had once reprimanded her for scratching the very same table with a grocery bag.
Then she hated herself for thinking about furniture when her unborn son needed her to concentrate on staying conscious and breathing.
The dispatcher kept speaking, a calm voice in a room full of cold surfaces, while Hannah pressed her forehead to her bent knees and waited for the sound of an ambulance.
At the front entrance, tires crunched over the wet gravel, and a pair of headlights swept the hallway before disappearing.
Hannah thought for one desperate second that Brent had changed his mind, but the man who came through the unlocked door wore a dark overcoat and carried a familiar leather portfolio.
Gideon Vale was the billionaire founder of Vale Meridian Holdings, the man whose approval determined whether Brent's career continued its spectacular climb.
He stopped dead at the sight of Hannah on the floor, and the portfolio fell from his hand as if his fingers had forgotten how to hold it.
“Hannah?” he said, his voice breaking on her name. “Oh, God. Hannah.”
He crossed the hall and knelt beside her, listening as she told him the ambulance was coming and Brent was at his mother's party.
Gideon did not try to lift her or pretend he understood childbirth better than the dispatcher; he gave the operator his name, confirmed the address, and followed every instruction.
He removed his coat and placed it over her shoulders, then stayed where she could see him whenever the pain forced her eyes shut.
“How did you know to come here?” she whispered between contractions, bewildered that the most powerful man Brent knew was sitting on the floor with her.
Gideon glanced toward a cream-colored envelope protruding from his portfolio, and a grief older than Hannah herself seemed to pass across his face.
“I came because there is something I should have told you myself,” he said. “And because I was afraid someone had kept it from you.”
Hannah could not understand him; another wave of pain rose, and she gripped his hand before she could think about how absurd it was to cling to Brent's boss.
“You're not alone,” Gideon said, his voice firm now. “I promise you will not be alone through this.”
The ambulance arrived within minutes, its red lights painting the lilies and broken porcelain in violent flashes while paramedics entered carrying equipment.
As they worked, Gideon gave the dispatcher his notes about the onset of symptoms, then stood aside so the professionals could assess Hannah and move her safely.
She caught his sleeve before they wheeled her away and asked whether he would tell Brent where they were going, though shame burned at having to beg a stranger for such a favor.
“I'll tell him,” Gideon answered, “and I'll be there when you arrive.”
Hannah saw something shining in his eyes that looked almost like recognition, though they had met only at two company events and shared little more than polite conversation.
At St. Catherine's Medical Center, doctors examined her and determined that labor had begun; they also monitored concerns from her earlier collapse, but reassured her that the baby was responding well.
Gideon waited outside the delivery suite, refusing three calls from his office and one from a furious Brent whose first question was why the chairman had gone to his house.
Six hours later, Hannah heard her son's first astonishing cry, and the world narrowed to the warm weight placed against her chest.
She called him Noah, the name she had chosen after her foster mother told her that every child deserved a name associated with a fresh beginning.
Only after she had counted his fingers and watched his tiny mouth open in sleep did she remember that the person who should have been beside her had never come.
Gideon stood in the doorway when a nurse invited him to say hello, looking at Noah with the expression of someone watching a lost star return to the sky.
“There's someone I need to explain,” he began, but heavy footsteps suddenly pounded through the corridor and drowned out the rest.
Brent appeared with his tie undone, his face flushed not with worry but with indignation at finding Gideon beside the bed.
“Give me my son,” he demanded, advancing toward the infant whom Gideon held only because Hannah had asked him to while the nurse adjusted her pillows.
Gideon immediately placed Noah into the nurse's waiting arms, and the nurse stepped back to protect the child while a security officer approached the doorway.
“Your son is safe,” Gideon said, moving between Brent and Hannah. “Your wife needed you, and you abandoned her.”
Brent lunged toward him, shoved a rolling medical table with his hip, and sent a tray of unused instruments clattering to the floor before security restrained him.
“You think you can take my family?” he shouted, but Gideon did not raise his hands or move toward him.
“No,” Gideon answered quietly. “I think you've spent five weeks keeping a family from finding one another.”
He took a cream-colored envelope from his jacket, the seal still folded around a letter that should have reached Hannah more than a month earlier.
“YOU HID THIS FROM MY DAUGHTER!” he said, and Brent's face went utterly white.
Hannah stared at the billionaire, scarcely hearing the monitors beside her bed, and repeated the only two words she could understand.
May you like
“Your daughter?”
Gideon turned toward her, tears finally escaping down his cheeks. “I've waited thirty-two years to call you my daughter.”
