The climate control inside the Mercedes kept the temperature at a flawless twenty degrees, while outside Los Angeles simmered beneath the sticky heat of a Friday afternoon.
Alexander Reed, CEO of Global Horizons Capital, studied stock fluctuations on his tablet with the same detached focus that had built his empire: no feelings, only outcomes.
“Sir, Sunset Boulevard is blocked by a protest,” said Marcus, his driver and head of security for nearly fifteen years. “We’ll need to cut through the side streets.”
Alexander didn’t raise his eyes.
“Do what you need to, Marcus. Just get me to dinner with the Tokyo investors. They don’t appreciate delays.”
The black armored sedan turned smoothly, slipping into a neighborhood Alexander rarely saw. Cracked pavement, taco stands, children weaving through traffic—the vivid disorder of ordinary life, far removed from the glass tower where he ruled from above.
A red light forced them to stop at a crowded intersection. Alexander exhaled, locked his tablet, and glanced out the tinted window.
Time stopped.
On the sidewalk, beneath the faded awning of a corner market, sat four little girls.
Four.
They looked about nine years old. Their clothes were worn and carefully mended. They sat on overturned crates selling chewing gum and small bundles of wilting daisies. It wasn’t their poverty that made Alexander’s chest tighten.
It was their faces.
They were identical. Four mirror images of one another—and of someone he had tried to erase from memory.
Chestnut hair fell in soft, unruly waves. The same delicate chin. And when one of them looked directly at the car, Alexander felt something strike him like a fist: their eyes. Emerald green with flecks of gold—a rare trait in the Reed family.
“Marcus, pull over,” Alexander said, his voice suddenly rough.
“Sir, the light’s green—”
“Pull over. Now.”
The brakes screeched as the car stopped abruptly.
Alexander lowered the window. Heat and street noise flooded in. The girls startled. The one who seemed oldest stood, subtly shielding the others.
“Would you like some gum, sir?” she asked.
Her voice carried a musical tone he hadn’t heard in a decade.
He removed his sunglasses. The girls stared at him with curiosity, not recognition. There was no deception in their faces. Only truth.
Ten years earlier.
He had thrown Isabella out of his mansion, accusing her of betrayal. Doctors had told him he was sterile. When she had come to him glowing, pregnant with multiples, he saw only proof of infidelity.
“Get out!” he had shouted as she sobbed, hands over her stomach. “I never want to see you—or those children—again!”
She had left without taking a dollar, promising he would regret it. He never searched for her. He convinced himself he had been wronged.
Now four pairs of green eyes stared at him from a forgotten sidewalk.
“What are your names?” he asked quietly.
“I’m Ava,” said the eldest. “These are Chloe, Harper, and Lily.”
“And your mother?”
The girls exchanged a heavy look.
“She’s working,” Ava said.
“In jail,” Lily whispered before her sister could stop her.
Alexander felt dizzy. “Why?”
“For stealing milk and medicine when Harper had pneumonia,” Ava replied, fierce and protective. “She’ll be out soon.”
Alexander rolled the window up, struggling to breathe.
“Cancel dinner,” he told Marcus. “Call private investigator Donovan. I want everything. Immediately.”
The report arrived the next morning. Alexander locked himself in his office with a glass of whiskey.
Isabella Cruz. Serving three years for repeated petty theft. Currently at Valley State Prison.
Birth certificates of four minors. Father: Unknown. Dates perfectly aligned with the time before their separation.
Then the medical file.
Donovan had gone further, questioning the retired family urologist who now lived lavishly by the coast.
“You weren’t sterile, Mr. Reed,” the doctor had confessed. “Low count, yes—but not impossible. Your mother insisted Isabella was beneath you. She paid me to falsify the report.”
Alexander hurled the crystal glass against the wall.
His mother. Eleanor Reed. Dead two years now, buried with her secret. She had destroyed his family out of pride. And he had never doubted her.
He collapsed into his chair, tears falling freely. He had condemned his own daughters to poverty. The woman he loved had gone to prison trying to feed his children.
Pain turned into resolve.
