My Mafia Boss Ex-Husband Locked 200 Billionaires Inside a Ballroom When Three Little Boys Called Him Daddy—His Mistress Knew the Truth

PART 2: The Woman Who Stole Five Years From Him

“Everyone stays exactly where they are.”

Gabriel Cross’s voice cut through the ballroom like a blade.

Two hundred guests stood frozen beneath the golden chandeliers. Some were furious. Others were frightened. A few had already begun whispering into their phones, desperately trying to reach people powerful enough to challenge the Cross family.

But Gabriel seemed oblivious to all of them.

His attention remained fixed on three little boys standing behind my legs.

His sons.

“Mr. Cross,” his head of security, Dominic, approached cautiously. “The exits are secured. What are your instructions?”

Gabriel didn’t look away from my children.

“Nobody leaves until I know the truth.”

I felt my stomach tighten.

“Gabriel, these people have nothing to do with our marriage. You have no right to keep them here.”

His gaze finally shifted to me.

For a moment, the ruthless man I remembered disappeared, replaced by the husband who used to kiss my forehead before leaving for work and promise that no harm would ever come to me.

Then I remembered Serena’s perfume on his shirts.

The late-night phone calls.

The divorce papers.

And the day I walked out of his penthouse with nothing but a suitcase and a heart so broken I could barely breathe.

“You’re right,” he said quietly.

He turned toward Dominic.

“Open the doors. Nobody here is to be detained. Anyone who wants to leave may do so.”

A stunned murmur spread through the room.

Gabriel Cross had just admitted, in front of New York’s wealthiest and most influential people, that his former wife was right.

But before the guests could begin moving, he added, “I need ten minutes with Claire. Voluntarily. No threats, no interference. If she wants to leave, she leaves.”

His eyes returned to mine.

“Please.”

That last word almost hurt more than everything else.

Because five years ago, I had begged this man to listen to me.

He hadn’t.

Now he was asking me for ten minutes.

I looked down at my sons.

Leo was gripping the hem of my dress. Julian had moved slightly in front of his brothers, his little face unusually serious. Mateo, the most affectionate of the three, was staring at Gabriel with open curiosity.

“Mommy,” Mateo whispered, “is he really our daddy?”

The question shattered something inside me.

I knelt and brushed his hair away from his forehead.

“I don’t know what you should call him yet, sweetheart.”

Gabriel heard every word.

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue.

For once, he seemed to understand that being their biological father did not automatically give him the right to be called anything.

Especially not after five years of absence he hadn’t even known about.

I took a breath.

“Ten minutes,” I told him. “And my children stay with me.”

“Of course.”

“And if you raise your voice, I walk out.”

“I won’t.”

Serena suddenly stepped between us.

“This is absurd!” she exclaimed. “Gabriel, you’re letting her manipulate you in front of everyone! Do you honestly believe three children are enough to prove they’re yours?”

Gabriel turned his head slowly.

“Did I ask for your opinion?”

Her face reddened.

“I’m your partner!”

“You were.”

The words landed with devastating finality.

Serena stared at him as though he had slapped her.

Then she looked at me, and I saw something far more frightening than jealousy in her eyes.

Panic.

Pure, unmistakable panic.

Because she knew something.

And whatever it was, she was terrified Gabriel would discover it.

We moved into a private reception room adjoining the ballroom.

Gabriel ordered his men to remain outside the door. I kept the boys beside me on a velvet sofa, while he stood several feet away, as though he was afraid getting any closer might frighten them.

For a man who had built an empire by making other people fear him, his uncertainty was almost painful to witness.

He removed his black jacket and loosened his tie.

Then he crouched in front of the boys.

“Hello,” he said.

Leo studied him suspiciously.

“Hello.”

“My name is Gabriel.”

“I know,” Leo replied. “Everyone keeps saying your name.”

A faint, broken smile touched Gabriel’s mouth.

“That’s probably because I talk too much.”

Julian frowned.

“You don’t look like someone who talks too much.”

For the first time that evening, I nearly laughed.

Gabriel actually chuckled.

It was a small, startled sound, as though he had forgotten how to make it.

“And what do I look like?”

Julian considered him.

“Someone who doesn’t smile.”

The smile vanished from Gabriel’s face.

He looked at his son for a long moment.

Then he nodded.

“That’s fair.”

Mateo climbed down from the sofa before I could stop him. He approached Gabriel with the fearless curiosity only a five-year-old could possess.

“Do you have a mommy?”

Gabriel blinked.

“I did.”

“Where is she?”

“She passed away a long time ago.”

Mateo’s expression softened.

“I’m sorry.”

Gabriel looked as though those two simple words had struck him somewhere deep inside.

“Thank you, little man.”

Mateo tilted his head.

“Are you sad because you don’t have your mommy anymore?”

Gabriel swallowed.

“Sometimes.”

“Mommy says it’s okay to cry when you’re sad.”

I turned my face away.

I couldn’t bear to watch the man who had once dismissed my tears receive tenderness from a child who had never known him.

Gabriel lowered his eyes.

“Your mommy sounds like a very wise woman.”

“She is,” Julian said immediately.

Leo nodded.

“She makes pancakes shaped like dinosaurs.”

“And she checks under our beds when we’re scared,” Mateo added.

Gabriel looked at me.

There was no accusation in his eyes now.

Only the terrible realization that he had missed every ordinary miracle of their childhood.

Their first words.

Their first steps.

Their first days at preschool.

Every fever, every nightmare, every scraped knee.

He had missed five years of being their father.

And neither money nor power could buy those years back.

“Claire,” he whispered. “I don’t know how to make this right.”

“You can’t make five years disappear.”

“I know.”

“No, Gabriel. You don’t.”

I stood, my voice trembling despite my determination to remain calm.

“You don’t know what it was like to sit alone in a hospital room after discovering I was carrying triplets. You don’t know what it felt like when the doctor told me one of the babies might not survive. You don’t know how I spent nights holding three newborns while trying to convince myself that I could be enough for all of them.”

His face went completely still.

“One of them might not survive?”

I looked at him.

“Mateo was born with serious breathing complications. He spent eleven days in neonatal intensive care.”

Gabriel slowly turned toward Mateo.

The little boy was busy showing Leo a toy car he had found in his pocket.

“Eleven days,” Gabriel repeated.

His hands curled into fists.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

I let out a bitter breath.

“Because I didn’t have anyone to tell.”

He looked at me, devastated.

“I would have come.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“Even if Serena had told you I was trying to ruin your life? Even if she had said I was lying? Even if it meant admitting that your divorce had been a mistake?”

He opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

That silence told me more than any promise could have.

Finally, he said, “I don’t know what I would have done then.”

I nodded slowly.

“At least that’s honest.”

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then Gabriel reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a folded document.

It was old, creased at the edges, and visibly worn from being handled many times.

He placed it on the table between us.

“I never told you this,” he said, “but I kept a copy of our divorce agreement.”

I stared at the paper.

“Why?”

“Because I regretted signing it before the ink had dried.”

My heart gave a painful twist.

He continued.

“I told myself you wanted freedom. I told myself you had already chosen a life without me. And every time I thought about calling you, Serena reminded me that you had taken the settlement money and disappeared.”

“I never took your money.”

“I know that now.”

“No, you don’t.” I pulled a document from my handbag. “Because if you knew, you would have asked why your lawyers sent the settlement to an account I had never opened.”

Gabriel froze.

“What?”

I placed the document beside his.

It was a bank statement from five years earlier, obtained after months of fighting to clear my name.

The account had been opened using my identity.

The signature was a convincing imitation of mine.

But the funds had never reached me.

Gabriel picked up the paper.

His eyes moved rapidly across the page.

Then he read the account holder’s name.

His expression changed.

“Richard Vale.”

Serena’s father.

For the first time that evening, Gabriel looked genuinely frightened.

Not for himself.

For what the discovery meant.

Richard Vale had been one of the most influential men in Gabriel’s financial empire. He had helped arrange several major investments and had enjoyed privileged access to Gabriel’s legal and business affairs.

And Richard was also the man who had insisted, five years earlier, that I was an unsuitable wife for the future head of the Cross organization.

“He stole the settlement,” Gabriel murmured.

“He didn’t just steal the money.”

I pulled another paper from my handbag.

“This is a letter from your attorney. It says I voluntarily waived my financial rights and agreed never to contact you again.”

Gabriel’s fingers tightened around the page.

“I never authorized this.”

“I know.”

“Claire, I never told anyone to send you that.”

“I know that now, too.”

He stared at me.

“Then why did you believe I had?”

The answer had lived inside me for five years.

“Because your mistress stood outside your office the day I signed the divorce papers and told me you were waiting for me to leave.”

Gabriel’s face went pale.

“Serena?”

“She said you had finally realized I was a weakness. She said you were going to marry her as soon as the divorce became final.”

He took a step backward.

“That isn’t possible.”

“Why? Because you loved her?”

His silence was answer enough.

I looked at him sadly.

“Gabriel, I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you. I left because I believed you had stopped loving me.”

He looked as though he had forgotten how to breathe.

Then his phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

He glanced at the screen.

The name displayed there was Dominic.

Gabriel answered immediately.

“What?”

His head of security spoke so loudly that I could hear him from across the room.

“Boss, we have a problem. Serena is gone.”

Gabriel’s expression hardened.

“Gone where?”

“She left through the east corridor while everyone was distracted. But that’s not the worst part.”

“What is it?”

“Her father just boarded a private jet at Teterboro Airport. His flight plan lists London as the destination.”

Gabriel’s gaze shifted to the forged bank statement in his hand.

“When?”

“Seven minutes ago.”

A cold silence filled the room.

Then Dominic added the words that made my blood run cold.

“Boss, our financial department just discovered that someone has been moving money out of your private accounts for the last three months.”

Gabriel didn’t move.

“How much?”

“Almost two hundred billion dollars in assets are exposed through a series of shell companies. We haven’t confirmed how much has actually been transferred.”

I gripped the back of the sofa.

Two hundred billion.

The number was so enormous that it barely felt real.

Gabriel’s voice dropped to a deadly whisper.

“Find Serena. Freeze every account connected to Richard Vale. And nobody touches either of them until I know exactly what they’ve done.”

“Understood.”

He ended the call.

For a moment, he stood completely still.

Then he turned toward me.

“I need you to tell me everything you remember about the divorce.”

I shook my head.

“No.”

His face tightened.

“Claire—”

“You have spent five years believing I betrayed you. Tonight, you discovered that someone forged my signature, stole my settlement, and kept your children a secret from you.”

I picked up Mateo and reached for the other boys.

“I have answered enough questions for one night.”

He looked at the children.

Then back at me.

“You’re right.”

The admission surprised me.

He stepped aside, clearing the path to the door.

“I won’t stop you.”

I walked past him.

But just as my hand touched the doorknob, he spoke again.

“Claire?”

I closed my eyes.

“What?”

“If someone deliberately separated me from my sons, I swear I’ll uncover the truth.”

I turned to face him.

“Don’t make that promise to me.”

His eyes searched mine.

“Make it to them.”

Then I opened the door and left.

Behind me, Gabriel Cross remained in the room with the first real evidence that the woman he had trusted had helped destroy his family.

But Serena wasn’t running because she feared losing Gabriel.

She was running because she knew what was hidden in the final envelope.

The envelope I had never opened.

The envelope that had arrived at my apartment three days before our divorce became final.

And inside it was a photograph that would change everything.