Chapter 1 - The Red Crayon
I boarded a flight on Christmas Eve, furious over a $780 million business deal and certain that nothing was more important than reaching Denver before midnight. Then a red crayon rolled into my shoe.
A little boy looked up at me with the exact same emerald-green eyes I saw every morning in the mirror. Three rows later, I spotted the woman I had once intended to marry holding a little girl who possessed those exact same features.
My name is Damon Prescott, and until that night, I believed I knew what ambition could cost a man.
“Sorry,” the boy murmured, reaching down toward my polished leather oxford. “It got away.”
He was no older than two or three. Sandy-brown curls tumbled over his forehead, and a distinct, sharp dimple dented his left cheek when he offered a tentative, sheepish smile.
I had carried that identical dimple my entire life.
“What’s your name?” I asked, my voice suddenly sounding like gravel caught in gears.
“Luke.”
A woman’s voice drifted down the aisle from behind him, soft yet threaded with immediate anxiety. “Luke, honey, come back here right now.”
My chest seized before I even turned. That voice lived in the quietest, darkest corners of my memory.
Cassandra Hayes was standing in row twenty-eight. She carried a little girl balanced on her hip. Her caramel hair was cut shorter than the long waves she wore years ago, and faint, purplish shadows lined her eyes, but I would have recognized her silhouette in a pitch-black room.
The little girl resting against her shoulder turned, blinking through thick lashes. She had my eyes, too.
“Damon,” Cassandra whispered.
My gaze flickered violently between the boy at my feet and the toddler in her arms. The internal calendar I kept ruthlessly organized in my head began calculating dates with cold, terrifying precision. Cassandra and I had broken apart three years ago. The twins could not be more than thirty months old. The final, agonizing night we had spent together in my Chicago apartment had taken place almost exactly nine months before their birth.
The realization hit me with the physical force of a sledgehammer. My knuckles went white against the edge of the overhead bin.
“Whose children are these, Cassandra?”
Every drop of color abandoned her face.
Before she could speak, a flight attendant touched my elbow from behind, her voice practiced and firm. “Sir, you need to return to your seat in first class immediately. The doors are cross-checked and we are preparing for departure.”
“We need to talk,” I told Cassandra, ignoring the crew member.
“Not here,” Cassandra whispered, her knuckles tightening around the fabric of her daughter’s sweater. “Not with them listening.”
Luke looked back and forth between us, his tiny brow furrowing. “Mommy, do you know that mad man?”
Her answer cut deeper than any corporate betrayal I had ever endured. “I did once, sweetheart.”
I retreated to seat 2B for one reason alone: federal aviation regulations accomplished what my board of directors, Wall Street rivals, and personal demons never could. They made me sit down.
My phone vibrated violently against my thigh just before the pilot announced our ascent.
*The acquisition team is assembled at the Denver office,* the text from my chief counsel read. *Merritt Systems needs your physical signature before midnight, or their board will trigger the exclusivity clause with Calder Industries.*
Four hours earlier, that text represented the culmination of my life’s work. Prescott Technologies had spent nine brutal months structuring the $780 million takeover of Merritt’s neonatal medical patents—a platform designed to eradicate infant respiratory collapse. It was a project born from the ashes of my childhood, sparked by the death of my baby sister Clara decades ago.
Now, twenty rows behind me, two living children held my blood in their veins.
As the jet punched through the freezing cloud deck over the Pacific Northwest, the seatbelt sign chimed off. I unbuckled instantly.
The flight attendant intercepted me in the galley. “Sir, please return to your seat.”
“My children are back there,” I said plainly.
Her professional mask slipped, replaced by quiet astonishment. She stepped aside.
I walked down the narrow aisle, every step feeling heavier than the last. Cassandra was waiting. She had coaxed Luke back into his seat and was holding both children close. The elderly passenger across the aisle was openly staring.
I lowered myself into the empty middle seat across the armrest from her. Luke peered at me with quiet curiosity; the little girl, whom Cassandra called Violet, buried her face in an old, gray plush elephant.
“Tell me the truth,” I said, keeping my tone so low only she could hear. “No lawyers. No evasions. Cassandra, are they mine?”
Her eyes pooled with tears that refused to spill. “They are yours, Damon.”
A suffocating silence enveloped me. Three years. I had missed their first cries. Their first steps. Two Christmases.
“Why?” The word tore from my throat, raw and fractured. “Why would you keep them from me?”
Cassandra’s chin trembled, but her jaw set into iron. “I tried to tell you, Damon. I came to your tower. I begged to see you.”
She reached into her worn canvas shoulder bag, pulled out a folded, yellowing document, and thrust it against my chest.
“Your father had security throw me out, and the next morning, this arrived by courier.”
I unfolded the paper with trembling fingers. It was an ironclad, predatory Non-Disclosure Agreement and Cease-and-Desist order bearing the embossed seal of Prescott Holdings—accompanied by a check for half a million dollars and an explicit, typed threat: *Acknowledge this pregnancy publicly, and you will be sued into personal bankruptcy. Damon will never see you, and you will lose custody of whatever you carry.*
May you like
At the bottom of the page was my father’s signature—and directly beside it, forged in unmistakable precision, was my own.
***
