Chapter 3 - Blood Is Not Loyalty
Matteo Cross arrived at the hospital forty minutes later smiling.
That was the first thing Alina noticed.
Not concern.
Not confusion.
A smile.
Dorian’s younger brother had always been charming in the dangerous way expensive champagne was charming—smooth enough to make people forget what it could do to them.
He entered the private hospital wing wearing a navy suit and carrying flowers.
“For Alina.”
Dorian looked at the bouquet.
“Put them down.”
Matteo did.
Then he looked at Alina.
“I heard you fainted.”
“I didn’t.”
“Dorian exaggerates.”
“No,” she said. “He commands. Different problem.”
Matteo laughed.
Dorian did not.
“Why are you here?” Dorian asked.
“Family concern.”
“How did you know?”
Silence.
Only half a second.
But Alina saw it.
Matteo recovered smoothly.
“Marco called.”
Marco, standing near the door, said, “No, I didn’t.”
The smile disappeared.
Dorian took one step toward his brother.
“Try again.”
Matteo glanced around the room.
“You’re really doing this here?”
“Doing what?”
“Treating me like an enemy.”
“I asked how you knew.”
Matteo’s eyes went to Alina.
Then, almost imperceptibly, to her stomach.
Dorian saw it.
Everything changed.
He seized Matteo’s jacket and drove him backward against the wall.
Alina gasped.
“Dorian!”
No punch followed.
Dorian simply held him there.
“Who told you?”
Matteo’s face reddened.
“You’re insane.”
“Who told you she was here?”
“Everyone knows everything about you!”
“Not this.”
Matteo stopped struggling.
Dorian leaned closer.
“Who told you?”
Matteo smiled again.
But this smile had no warmth.
“You really did it, didn’t you?”
“Did what?”
“You got her pregnant.”
Alina’s blood ran cold.
Dorian released him.
That was somehow more frightening.
“Marco.”
The security chief closed the door.
Matteo glanced toward it.
Then back at his brother.
“You can’t imprison me.”
“No,” Dorian said. “But I can stop pretending you’re family.”
The next hour exposed six months of lies.
Not Dorian’s lies.
Matteo’s.
Financial records connected shell companies to Viktor Soren.
Security schedules had been leaked.
Vehicle routes sold.
Staff rotations compromised.
And the photograph taken inside Alina’s bedroom had originated from a temporary security technician personally recommended by Matteo.
Alina sat silently while the evidence accumulated.
Finally Matteo laughed.
“You think this was about money?”
Dorian stared at him.
“What was it about?”
“You.”
Matteo’s bitterness emerged all at once.
“Father gave you everything.”
“He gave me responsibility.”
“He gave you the empire.”
“He gave me debt, enemies and businesses one investigation away from collapse.”
“And you turned them legitimate.”
“Yes.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
Alina frowned.
Matteo looked at her.
“My brother became respectable for you.”
Dorian said nothing.
“He closed operations our father spent decades building. He walked away from millions because his pretty wife couldn’t sleep at night knowing where the money came from.”
Alina looked at Dorian.
He had never told her that.
Matteo continued.
“He weakened the Cross family.”
“No,” Dorian said. “I changed it.”
“You domesticated it.”
“I made it something our children could inherit without blood on their hands.”
The room became silent.
Our children.
Dorian seemed to realize what he had said.
His eyes found Alina.
Matteo laughed.
“And now there really is an heir.”
Dorian turned back.
“That child has nothing to do with this.”
“That child has everything to do with it.”
Matteo leaned forward.
“Do you know what Father’s trust says?”
Dorian’s face changed.
Alina saw recognition.
“What trust?”
Dorian ignored her.
Matteo smiled.
“There it is.”
“Stop.”
“You never told her?”
“Matteo.”
“If Dorian has a biological child, controlling interest in Cross Holdings transfers permanently to his direct line.”
Alina stared at her husband.
Dorian closed his eyes briefly.
Another secret.
Another decision.
Matteo looked almost delighted.
“That baby is worth billions.”
Alina’s hand moved instinctively over her stomach.
Dorian saw it.
His face became lethal.
“You will never speak about my child like that again.”
Matteo shrugged.
“You think I’m the danger?”
Dorian froze.
Matteo’s smile faded.
“You still don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I didn’t send the man today.”
Marco stepped forward.
“The surveillance traces to your accounts.”
“I paid for information,” Matteo said. “Not today’s operation.”
“Who did?”
Matteo looked at Alina.
Then at Dorian.
“You’ve spent six months looking outside your house.”
Dorian’s face went still.
Matteo continued.
“You should have been looking at who was already inside it.”
Alina thought about the staff.
The guards.
The attorneys.
The family.
Then she remembered something.
A detail so ordinary she had forgotten it.
The morning she found the divorce papers on Dorian’s desk, someone had already been in his office.
A woman.
Someone Dorian trusted completely.
Alina looked at him.
“Your mother.”
May you like
Dorian’s face lost color.
And three floors below them, Celeste Cross stepped out of an elevator.
