Chapter 7 - Shadows of the Past Revealed
The executive office fell into a silence so dense that even the gentle hum of the building's climate control system seemed to fade away. Alexander stood frozen, holding the security officer’s phone in a vice-like grip. His eyes remained locked on Tommy through the pristine glass, tracing the child’s features—the messy brown hair, the shape of his jaw, the distinct structure of his hazel eyes. How had he been so blind? How had he not seen the undeniable resemblance immediately?
Maria took a cautious step closer to Alexander, her eyes darting between the pale billionaire and the child outside. "Alexander, please... tell me what's going on. You're trembling."
Alexander slowly turned his head to look at Maria. His voice, usually an unshakeable baritone, was barely a whisper, thick with an emotion she had never heard from him before.
"Eleven years ago," Alexander began, his words measured and heavy with buried pain, "before the Morgan Tower was built, before the international expansion... there was an accident during the initial site clearing in the southern district."
Maria’s breath hitched. She remembered that time—it was the dark era of Alexander’s career that he refused to speak of, a time when his late uncle had controlled the company's ground operations with an iron, unscrupulous fist.
"My uncle suppressed the reports," Alexander continued, his jaw tightening as he looked down at the phone screen once more. "A young woman, an engineer working for one of our subcontractors, was severely injured on site. She vanished from the company payroll shortly after. My uncle told me she had accepted a private settlement and moved away."
He looked back out at Tommy. The child had set his cracked plastic bucket down on the marble floor and was blowing on his freezing hands to warm them up.
"She didn't move away," Alexander said, his voice dropping into a grim, devastating register. "She was forced into the Shadows district, blacklisted by our uncle’s legal team so she could never work again. And ten years ago... she gave birth to a son."
May you like
Maria covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes widening in realization. "Alexander... you don't mean..."
"Tommy isn't just a boy who snuck into my garden," Alexander said, his voice trembling with a mixture of profound guilt and sudden, overwhelming love. "He is my nephew. My late brother’s only child."
