# Chapter 3: The Devil's Reward
The text arrived at 7:43 AM.
Julian Thorne's messages were always cryptic—occupational paranoia in a business where phones could be subpoenaed—but this one was just a single word followed by a time.
Found. 8:00.
Dante Costello read it twice in the elevator ascending to his private floor at Costello Global Logistics headquarters. The building was a monument to controlled power: forty stories of steel and glass overlooking Manhattan, every surface reflecting the dawn like a blade.
Found.
He'd had Julian searching for five years. The first year had been obsessive—every security feed from that night analyzed, every guest list cross-referenced, every woman who'd left the Metropolitan Concordat Ball early tracked down and investigated. The second year had been methodical. The third, periodic. By year four, it had become a standing order: background noise in Julian's endless surveillance operations.
And now: Found.
The elevator opened directly into Dante's executive suite. His assistant wasn't in yet—he preferred the empty hours before the performance of legitimacy began. He poured scotch despite the early hour, a tumbler of Macallan that caught the light like amber, and walked to the private conference room where Julian waited.
Julian Thorne looked like death dressed in Tom Ford. Pale, precise, his ice-blonde hair severe enough to suggest military discipline he'd never quite shed. He stood when Dante entered, and that told Dante everything about the weight of what came next. Julian never stood unless the news demanded it.
"Show me," Dante said.
Julian slid a thin dossier across the glass table.
Dante set down his scotch and opened it.
The first page was a surveillance photograph, high-resolution, time-stamped three days prior. A woman in professional attire—charcoal blazer, cream blouse—standing in a conference room presenting something on a screen. Dark hair pulled into a practical twist. Profile view, three-quarter angle.
He studied her face. Strong jaw. Elegant neck. The kind of posture that came from either training or survival.
He didn't recognize her.
Then Julian turned the page, and Dante's hand froze.
A second photograph. Same conference room, different angle. The woman had turned, and in the background—partially visible through a doorway—a small boy. Four years old, maybe five. Dark hair. Carrying a tablet too large for his hands.
The boy's face was angled toward the camera.
Dante stopped breathing.
The child's eyes were dark. Not just brown—dark. The specific shade of near-black that Dante saw in the mirror every morning. The intensity in that small face, the way the boy's gaze fixed on something beyond the frame with complete focus—
It was like looking at a photograph of himself at that age.
"His name is Leo Vance," Julian said quietly. "Born April seventh, five years ago. Birth certificate lists mother as Anna Vance, father as unknown. No custody claims, no legal complications. The woman is the sole guardian."
Dante's fingers moved to the edge of the photograph, touching the boy's face. His son. His son.
"Anna Vance," Julian continued, "is the owner of VanceTech Securities, a small cybersecurity firm in Beacon. No digital footprint before five years ago. Social security number was issued to a deceased infant in Ohio—professional identity construction. She's been invisible by design."
"And?" Dante's voice came out rougher than intended.
Julian laid out additional documents: financial records, business registrations, a timeline marked with red flags. "Six weeks ago, her firm blocked a data intrusion attempt. The source was a shell company I traced back to Grimaldi fronts. That's what flagged her in my audit. When I pulled surveillance from her client meetings, I found"—he gestured to the photograph—"this."
Dante turned to the next page. A facial recognition analysis. Anna Vance's features compared against archived photographs of known criminal families. Partial matches to historical Grimaldi records. A note in Julian's efficient handwriting: Possible identity: Aria Grimaldi, daughter, reported missing five years ago, presumed dead.
The Masquerade Ball. Five years ago. The last time the Grimaldis had appeared at a neutral-ground event before their slow collapse began. A masked woman who'd met his eyes across a ballroom and hadn't looked away. Who'd matched him word for word, drink for drink, challenge for challenge. Who'd vanished before midnight like something out of a fairy tale, leaving him with nothing but a torn piece of lace from her mask and an obsession that had never quite died.
"She was there," Dante said. Not a question.
"The timeline matches exactly," Julian confirmed. "If she left the city immediately after and the child was born in April—"
"He's mine." Dante's voice cut through the analysis like a verdict. He touched the photograph again, Leo's small face staring back at him with those impossible eyes. "She's been hiding him. Hiding my son."
Julian's expression remained neutral, but Dante caught the micro-calculation behind it. "If you want custody, I can have legal documentation prepared within twenty-four hours. Emergency filing, sympathetic judge, her fraudulent identity gives us grounds—"
"No." Dante stood abruptly, the chair scraping against marble. He walked to the window, Manhattan spreading below him like a conquered territory. His city. His empire. His rules.
And somewhere two hours north, hidden in a nothing town called Beacon, was his son.
Five years. She'd had five years of Leo's life. First words. First steps. Birthdays and bedtimes and every small moment that built a childhood. She'd stolen that. Denied him. Dared to hide what belonged to him.
The rage that swept through Dante was arctic and absolute.
He retrieved something from his desk—a locked drawer he never opened, never discussed. Inside was a small wooden box. Inside that, a piece of torn lace. Midnight blue, delicate, still faintly smelling of her perfume after five years.
She'd been the only thing he'd ever lost. The only thing that had escaped him. And now he understood why.
She hadn't just run from him. She'd run with his son.
"I want everything," Dante said, his voice lethal with promise. "Every detail of her life. Every person she speaks to. Every route out of that town. And I want legal documentation prepared—custody papers, injunctions, anything that gives me leverage when I go to claim what's mine."
"When you—" Julian's tone sharpened with concern. "Dante, if you move personally, you expose yourself. Let me send a team—"
"When I go." Dante turned, and whatever Julian saw in his face made the man go still. "She hid my son from me for five years. She doesn't get a team. She gets me."
Julian nodded slowly. "I'll have surveillance increased immediately. Passive observation until you're ready to move."
"No." Dante's smile was cold enough to frost the windows. "Active containment. No one gets in or out of Beacon without my knowledge. I want her to know the walls are closing. I want her afraid before I arrive."
"And if she runs?"
"She won't get far." Dante studied the photograph of Leo one more time, memorizing every detail. His son. Four years of missed birthdays. Of first words he'd never heard. Of bedtimes and scraped knees and all the small eternities that made a father.
She'd stolen that. And he was going to make her pay for it in ways she couldn't imagine.
But first, he was going to take back what belonged to him.
"Find out everything," Dante said, his voice soft with promise. "And then find out when she planned to tell me I have a son."