Chapter 4 - The Snake in the Garden
While Garrison was racing through the rainy streets of Nashville toward his estate, a black sedan pulled into the private gates of the Forest Hills property.
Julianne Vale stepped out of the car, holding a thick folder in her gloved hand.
She walked into the house, her face set in a cold, triumphant smile. She didn't care about the rain ruining her shoes. She had found what she needed to end this foolishness once and for all.
She walked straight up the grand staircase to the second floor, pushing open the heavy oak door of the library.
Kyle was sitting at the massive mahogany desk, reading a dense medical textbook on pediatric pharmacology. Dr. Vance had just left for the afternoon, leaving the boy alone to study.
Kyle looked up as Julianne entered the room. He felt an instant, cold knot tighten in his stomach.
“Where is Garrison?” Julianne asked, her voice icy and sharp.
“He’s at his office,” Kyle said quietly, closing his textbook. “He doesn't usually come home until seven.”
Julianne walked over to the desk, standing over the eleven-year-old boy. She set her folder down on the smooth wood surface and leaned forward, resting her hands on the edge.
“You're a very clever little boy, aren't you, Kyle?” she said, her tone dripping with fake sweetness.
Kyle didn't answer. He kept his eyes fixed on her face, his hands resting flat on the desk.
“You knew who Garrison was before you followed that ambulance, didn't you?” Julianne accused, her eyes narrowing. “Your mother taught you about the Vale family before she died in that miserable municipal hospital two years ago.”
Kyle’s chest tightened. Hearing his mother mentioned by this woman felt like a slap across the face.
“My mom never talked about rich people,” Kyle said, his voice quiet but sharp. “She worked at a pharmacy. She was sick.”
“Your mother was a thief,” Julianne lied, her voice dropping into a vicious whisper designed to crush the boy’s spirit. “She stole intellectual property from our bio-tech division twelve years ago. She was fired in disgrace. She raised you in dirt and poverty because she knew if she ever brought you near this family, we would have had her prosecuted!”
Kyle stood up so fast his chair scraped loudly against the hardwood floor.
“My mom was not a thief!” Kyle yelled, his eyes flashing with a sudden, furious fire that caught Julianne off guard. “She was good! She spent every day helping people at the shelter! She died because she couldn't afford her medicine, not because she was a thief!”
Julianne laughed—a dry, bitter sound.
“Look at you,” she sneered. “Yelling like a street brat. You think because Garrison bought you some cashmere sweaters and a laptop that you belong here? You don't. You're a stain on this family’s name. Garrison is acting out of grief because his son almost died. But when he calms down, when he realizes what you really are... he will throw you right back into the gutter where your mother left you.”
Julianne pulled a pre-written legal document from her folder and slammed it onto the desk in front of Kyle.
“Sign this,” she ordered. “It’s a formal statement declaring that you refuse the adoption and wish to be placed in a private boarding school in Montana. I’ll pay you fifty thousand dollars on your eighteenth birthday. Take it and get out of my brother’s life before I destroy whatever memory you have left of your mother.”
Kyle looked down at the white paper.
He saw the legal jargon. He saw the words Renunciation of Custody.
For a second, the old fear—the fear that had kept him sleeping with his boots on under the overpass—rushed back into his veins. He thought about Garrison. Garrison had been kind. Garrison had fed him, protected him, and given him a bed.
If I stay here, Kyle thought, I’m going to ruin his life. His sister will hate him. The company will fight him.
Kyle slowly reached out his hand toward the pen sitting on the desk.
“Sign it,” Julianne urged, a greedy, triumphant smile spreading across her face.
“Don't touch that pen!”
The voice roared from the library doorway like a thunderclap.
Garrison stood in the entrance, his coat soaked with rain, his face twisted in a expression of such terrifying, murderous rage that Julianne stepped back from the desk in pure, instinctual horror.
Garrison marched into the room, his heavy footsteps shaking the floorboards. He shoved Julianne away from the desk so hard she nearly lost her footing, and placed his massive body between his sister and the boy.
Garrison looked at the legal document on the desk, then at the tears brimming in Kyle’s eyes.
“Did she touch you?” Garrison asked Kyle, his voice shaking with fury.
“No,” Kyle whispered.
Garrison grabbed the Renunciation of Custody document, tore it into tiny pieces, and shoved the handful of paper scraps directly into Julianne’s face.
“Get out of my house,” Garrison growled, every muscle in his body taut like a pulled bowstring.
“Garrison, listen to me!” Julianne shrieked, backing toward the door. “I found out who his mother was! She was Hannah Mercer! The woman who stole from the bio-tech division! He is using you to get revenge for her!”
“Hannah didn't steal anything!” Garrison yelled, his voice echoing off the vaulted library ceiling. “She left because she was pregnant with my child, and she knew you and our father would destroy her life to take him away from her!”
The room went completely, dead silent.
Julianne froze near the doorway, her mouth opening in shock. “What... what did you say?”
Kyle stood behind Garrison, his breath catching in his throat. He stared at the back of Garrison’s head, his mind spinning into complete, dizzying chaos.
My child?
Garrison slowly turned around to face Kyle.
The terrifying rage on the billionaire’s face completely melted away, replaced by an expression of profound, aching love and deep regret.
Garrison dropped to his knees right in front of the eleven-year-old boy, completely uncaring that his expensive trousers were kneeling in the scraps of torn paper on the floor.
“Kyle,” Garrison whispered, his voice cracking, tears welling in his eyes. “Your mother’s name was Hannah, right?”
Kyle nodded slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. “Yes.”
Garrison pulled a small, silver locket from his pocket—an item he had retrieved from his private vault at the office an hour ago. He opened the latch and held it out to the boy.
Inside the locket was a photograph of a young Garrison smiling beside a woman with bright brown eyes, dark wavy hair, and a split-lip smile.
Kyle gasped.
He reached out a trembling finger, touching the tiny photograph. It was the exact same picture his mother had kept tucked inside her old Bible—the picture she had looked at every night before she died.
“She... she kept this,” Kyle choked out, tears spilling over his cheeks. “She said... she said the man in the picture was lost.”
“I was lost, Kyle,” Garrison wept, reaching out and gently taking the boy’s small, shivering hands in his own. “I was lost for twelve years. I didn't know about you. If I had known... I would have searched the entire world to find you. You're my son, Kyle. My real, blood son.”
Julianne stood near the door, her face completely drained of color. She realized in that instant that her fight was over.
She hadn't uncovered a scandal to destroy a homeless boy.
She had just uncovered the legitimate, true biological heir to the entire multi-billion-dollar Vale empire.
Garrison didn't look back at his sister as she quietly, shamefully slipped out of the library and vanished into the rain.
He only looked at Kyle.
Kyle stared at Garrison’s face—at the tears, at the honest, broken love in the man’s eyes—and for the first time in two years, the heavy, dark armor around the boy’s heart completely shattered.
Kyle stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Garrison’s neck, burying his face into the billionaire’s wet shoulder.
May you like
Garrison wrapped his arms tightly around his eldest son, holding him close, weeping quietly into the boy’s dark hair.
“I’m home, Dad,” Kyle whispered.
