Chapter 5 - GHOSTS OF A FORGOTTEN NIGHT
The memories crashed into Nathaniel like a tidal wave.
Four years ago, he had been the target of a vicious corporate sabotage. A rival firm had slipped a powerful, experimental hallucinogen into his drink at a high-society charity gala. The drug was designed to make him collapse, to humiliate him in front of investors, and potentially induce a fatal heart attack.
He remembered stumbling out of the ballroom, his vision swimming, his heart hammering dangerously against his ribs. He had collapsed in a dark, secluded hallway, gasping for air, waiting for the end.
But then, an angel had found him.
A young woman, working as a temporary catering server, had pulled him into an empty hotel suite. She hadn't called an ambulance because Nathaniel, in his drug-induced delirium, had begged her not to, terrified of the scandal and the plunging stock prices.
She had stayed with him. She had bathed his burning face with ice water. She had held him as he shook violently from the toxins. And in the darkest hours of the night, when the drug had altered his senses and lowered every wall he had ever built, he had clung to her. He remembered her scent—vanilla and rain. He remembered the desperate, feverish passion that had consumed them both in that dark room.
When he woke up the next morning, his head pounding but his blood clear, she was gone.
He had spent millions trying to find her. He had hired the best private investigators in the world. But the catering company had gone bankrupt, the records were destroyed, and the woman with the scent of vanilla had vanished like smoke.
Nathaniel stared at the housekeeper sitting on his sofa.
He looked at her worn hands, her simple gray uniform, her terrified, beautiful eyes.
"It was you," he breathed, the magnitude of the revelation pinning him to his chair. "You were the girl at the St. Regis. You saved my life."
Grace gripped the edge of the sofa cushions. "I didn't know who you were," she whispered frantically, desperate to explain. "Not until the next morning. When I saw your face on the news, I panicked. I was nobody, Mr. Ashford. A broke college student working three jobs. I knew what men like you did to women like me. I knew your lawyers would destroy me if I came forward. So I ran."
"And then you got pregnant," Nathaniel said, his voice completely hollow.
Grace nodded, her tears falling freely now. "Lily is my entire world. When she was born, she looked exactly like you. I knew I couldn't hide forever. Two years ago, I lost my apartment. I was starving. I saw an ad for a housekeeper position at this estate. I thought… I thought if I worked here, if I stayed in the shadows, I could at least ensure my daughter was near her father. Even if he never knew her."
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Nathaniel buried his face in his hands. A raw, ragged breath tore through his chest. He had a daughter. He had a child. The little girl sitting on his carpet, playing with a paperweight, carried his blood, his eyes, his legacy.
And for three years, she had been living in the servants' quarters, eating scraps, while he threw multi-million-dollar parties above her head.
