Chapter 6 - THE UNSPOKEN TIMELINE
Vincent slowly sank onto one knee on the polished parquet floor.
The feared Chicago mob boss dropped down before the child, uncaring of his thousand-dollar suit pressing against the floor, uncaring of the six hundred high-society guests watching him in breathless shock. He lowered his massive, intimidating frame until his dark eyes were level with the little girl's.
Up close, the resemblance was an absolute indictment. The faint arch of her left eyebrow, the stubborn set of her chin, the way her small fingers curled tightly around the teddy bear’s arm—it was like looking back forty years into his own childhood.
The little girl didn't run. She didn't look afraid. She simply tilted her head, her dark eyes studying his trimmed beard and the dark geometric tattoos creeping up his neck with a curious, unbothered innocence.
Claire moved instantly.
Her calm, detached mask shattered for the first time, replaced by a fierce, wild maternal panic. In one swift, protective motion, Claire stepped forward, her shimmering pale-blue gown flaring as she pulled Lily back against her shins, shielding the child behind her body, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her daughter’s small hand.
“Don't touch her, Vincent,” Claire warned, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper.
Vincent did not reach out. His hands remained frozen in the air between them, his fingers twitching with a desperate, agonizing hunger he couldn't name.
He slowly lifted his gaze from the child back up to Claire’s face.
His dark eyes were wide, bloodshot, burning with a terrifying mixture of horror, awe, and desperate mathematical calculations. The timeline was screaming inside his skull like an emergency siren.
Five years ago.
Claire had walked out in October.
The child before him was walking, talking, fully formed—four years old, easily.
Vincent rose to his full height. He took a single, heavy step forward, closing the space between them, his voice dropping into a desperate, trembling whisper that was barely audible over the hum of the chandeliers:
“Claire... how old is she?”
Claire’s jaw locked. Her hazel eyes hardened into unbreakable stone. She tightened her grip on Lily’s small hand, her chin lifting, refusing to utter a single syllable.
Vincent stepped closer, his broad chest nearly brushing the shoulder of her blue gown, his voice dropping an octave lower, cracking with raw, unadulterated dread:
“How old is that little girl, Claire?”
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Claire remained dead silent.
And in that heavy, suffocating silence, the innocent child peeked around the folds of her mother’s blue gown, looked up at the towering man with her father’s dark eyes, and smiled.
