Walking With His Fiancée, the Mafia Boss Saw the Woman He Thought Had Died—Now Pregnant Spotlight8

Grant picked up the phone again. This time, he made two calls.

The first was to Dr. Warren Keane—the Holloway family’s private physician for more than twenty years, the man whose signature appeared on the death notice.

The second was to Father Edmund Shaw—the parish priest of the church the Holloway family had contributed to every year for generations.

Both calls were short, both polite, both carrying the same message:

“Tomorrow evening, I would like to invite you both to dinner. There are a few family matters I want to discuss.”

His voice was normal, gentle, as if he were truly inviting them to dinner.

Both accepted at once.

Grant put the phone down, turned off the light, and sat in the dark for a few more minutes.

He thought about the gray-blue eyes behind the glass that afternoon. She hadn’t been afraid when she saw him. She had prepared herself for that moment.

That meant she had known from the first day she was pushed into the dark that sooner or later, the darkness wouldn’t be able to hold her forever.

But she had still stayed in it for five months—alone, without calling him, without looking for him, without asking for help.

And that question—the question of why she hadn’t come to him—lay still at the bottom of Grant’s chest, heavier than any forged piece of paper.

He stood up and drove back to the mansion through the night.

Tomorrow would begin with a dinner. And that dinner wouldn’t end with dessert.

Dinner was set for 6:00 the next evening at the restaurant where the Holloway family kept a private room on the second floor—a room with no nameplate, not listed for reservations, and only those who had been invited knew how to get upstairs.

Grant arrived fifteen minutes early. He sat at the head of the table, ordered a bottle of wine, three glasses, and told the server not to come back in until he called.

The room was quiet. The light was pale yellow. The curtains were drawn shut.

Dr. Warren Keane arrived on time. He stepped inside, shook Grant’s hand, and sat down in the chair on the right. His forehead was beaded with sweat, even though the room was cool and he’d just come up from an air-conditioned parking area.

Grant poured wine for him and pushed the glass across.

Keane took the glass, thanked him, and took a sip. His hand held the glass normally, but his forehead was still wet.

Father Edmund Shaw arrived five minutes late. He knocked lightly before entering, nodded to Grant, nodded to Keane, and sat in the chair on the left. His round silver-rimmed glasses slipped slightly down the bridge of his nose as he lowered his head to sit. He pushed them back up, accepted the glass of wine Grant had already poured, and said, “Thank you.”

Grant didn’t rush. He asked Keane about the clinic, asked Shaw about the church, asked whether the weather this week was too hot.

The two men answered politely. Keane spoke more than Shaw. Shaw answered briefly, his voice soft, his eyes occasionally dropping to the wine glass he almost didn’t drink from.

The first fifteen minutes of dinner passed like every other social dinner the two men had ever attended in that room.

Then Grant set his wine glass down. Not hard, not softly. Just set it down and didn’t pick it up again.

He said in an ordinary voice, as though he were simply continuing the small talk:

“Lately, I’ve been reviewing all of the family’s legal records from the past two years. Contracts, medical papers, certificates. Everything with a signature connected to the Holloway household. Every document the two of you have signed for my family. Every paper.”

When he finished speaking, he went silent. He didn’t ask a question. He didn’t look at either man first. He looked into his own wine glass as if he were thinking about something else.

The room fell into silence—the kind of silence that an outsider would see as normal, only a pause between two conversations.

But Grant wasn’t an outsider.

Keane set his wine glass down on the table a little too hard. The wine rippled lightly in the glass, touched the sides, trembled, then settled.

Keane didn’t realize what he had just done. His hand drew back and rested on his lap beneath the table where he thought Grant couldn’t see it.

Shaw lifted his right hand to adjust his glasses. He pushed them up the bridge of his nose, though they hadn’t slipped at all. His finger touched the silver frame, then lowered again.

A small gesture. Quick and unconscious. Like someone scratching his nose when it doesn’t itch.

And then it happened.

Half a second.

Keane’s eyes turned left. Shaw’s eyes turned right.

Their gazes met across the middle of the table.

It wasn’t the look of two acquaintances sharing dinner. It was the look of two men standing together on a thin plank who had just heard it crack.

Half a second. Then both of them turned back to Grant, their faces normal, as though nothing had happened.

But Grant had seen it.

He had been taught to read people when he was seventeen. Desmond had taught him that a good liar could control his mouth, control his hands, control his voice—but no one could control the eyes in the first half second.

That half second was real. Everything after it was performance.

The two men sitting in front of Grant tonight had shared a secret. And when that secret was threatened, their first instinct wasn’t to look at Grant. It was to look at each other—because they needed to know whether the other one could hold.

That was the reflex of accomplices, not the reflex of innocent men.

Grant didn’t ask another question.

He smiled faintly and said, “I’m sure it’s only paperwork. Nothing complicated. I just want to organize things properly.”

Then he called for the server to bring in the main course.

The rest of dinner passed in pale, empty conversation. Keane ate faster than usual. Shaw barely ate at all.

At 9:15 that evening, the two men excused themselves.

Grant shook both their hands at the door of the room, thanked them politely, and said he would see them again.

Keane walked out first, his back slightly stiff. Shaw followed after him, adjusting his glasses one more time before going down the stairs.

Grant returned to the table and sat down, looking at the two wine glasses across from him. Keane’s glass was nearly empty. Shaw’s was almost untouched.

He didn’t need them to confess. He didn’t need proof from their mouths.

He only needed to know whether they belonged on the list.

And tonight, in that half second, both of them had written their own names onto it.