The Reflection in the Rain

Part 1: The Ghosts on 5th Avenue

Chapter 1: The Man in the Tower

The wind in Chicago cut through the city like a serrated knife. It was November, the kind of gray, relentless month that made you question why anyone lived in the Midwest.

I, Alexander Sterling, watched it from the safety of my armored limousine. At thirty-eight, I was the CEO of Sterling Global, a real estate empire that owned half the skyline. I was worth billions. I wore suits that cost more than the average American made in a year. I had a model on my arm for galas and a penthouse that touched the clouds.

But I was hollow.

Five years ago, my life had been different. I had been happy. I had been married to Elena, a woman who loved art and bad puns and me. Not my money. Me.

Then, she left.

No note. No fight. Just an empty closet and a served divorce paper sent by a lawyer I couldn’t trace. The settlement demand was zero. She didn’t want alimony. She didn’t want the house. She just wanted out.

I told myself she never loved me. I told myself she was just another gold digger who got bored or found a bigger fish. I buried my heart in concrete and steel, and I built an empire on top of the grave.

“Sir?” My driver, Henry, slowed the car. “Traffic is gridlocked. Construction on Michigan Avenue.”

“Fine,” I sighed, checking my Rolex. “I’ll walk. It’s only three blocks to the club.”

“It’s freezing, Sir.”

“I need the air.”

I stepped out. The cold hit me instantly, biting at my cheeks. I pulled my cashmere coat tighter and began to walk, my Italian leather shoes clicking on the wet pavement.

The street was crowded with holiday shoppers, tourists, and the invisible population of the city—the homeless.

I usually ignored them. It was a callus you developed living in a city like this. You looked straight ahead. You didn’t make eye contact.

But as I passed a luxury department store, a flash of color caught my eye.

A red scarf.

It was tattered, dirty, and wrapped around the neck of a woman sitting on a piece of cardboard near the steam vent.

I stopped. My breath hitched in my throat.

Elena had a scarf like that. I had bought it for her in Milan on our honeymoon.

Don’t be stupid, Alexander, I told myself. It’s just a red scarf.

I started to walk away. But then, the woman looked up.

Her face was gaunt. Her skin was gray with cold and grime. Her hair, once a glossy chestnut mane, was matted and hidden under a beanie.

But the eyes.

Those violet eyes.

It was Elena.

Chapter 2: The Mirror Image

I froze. The noise of the city faded into a dull roar.

Elena? My wife? The woman who vanished?

She didn’t see me. She was busy. She was tending to two bundles huddled on either side of her, under the shelter of her oversized, filthy coat.

“Eat,” she whispered. Her voice was raspy, broken. “Just a little bit more, Leo. Please.”

She was holding a half-eaten bagel.

One of the bundles moved. A child. A boy. He looked about four years old. He pushed the bagel away.

“I’m not hungry, Mommy. My tummy hurts.”

“You have to eat,” she begged.

Then the other bundle moved. Another boy. Identical.

Twins.

I stood there, paralyzed by a shock so profound it felt like a physical blow. Elena had children?

I walked closer. I couldn’t stop myself.

“Elena?” I whispered.

She stiffened. She looked up.

When she saw me, her eyes went wide. Panic—raw, animalistic terror—flooded her face. She didn’t say my name. She grabbed the children.

“Head down,” she hissed to them. “Don’t look.”

“Elena,” I said louder. “Is that you?”

She scrambled to stand up. She was weak. She stumbled. The boys clung to her legs.

“Please, Sir,” she said, altering her voice, making it lower, rougher. “We don’t want trouble. We’re moving.”

“Stop it,” I said. “It’s me. Alexander.”

She looked at me. She realized she couldn’t hide. The mask crumbled, leaving behind a devastation that broke me.

“Go away, Alexander,” she wept. “Please. Just go away.”

“You’re… you’re begging,” I said, my mind unable to process the image. “You’re on the street. Why? I have billions. You could have asked… you could have sued…”

“I don’t want your money!” she screamed.

The boys looked up at the shout.

And that was when my heart stopped beating.

I looked at them. Really looked at them.

They were four years old. They had dark, curly hair. They had my nose. My chin. And they had my eyes—steel gray.

They weren’t just any children. They were my children.

I did the math. She left five years ago.

“Elena,” I choked out. “Are they…”

She pulled them behind her, shielding them with her frail body. “They’re mine. Just mine.”

“They have my face,” I whispered.

I took a step forward.

“Don’t come near us!” she yelled. “I’ll scream! I’ll tell them you’re attacking us!”

“Why?” I asked, tears stinging my eyes in the cold wind. “Why are they here? Why are they eating garbage? I would have given them the world!”

“You would have taken them!” she sobbed. “That’s what she said! She said you’d take them and lock me away!”

“She?” I frowned. “Who?”

Elena looked around wildly, as if she expected a sniper on the rooftops. “Your mother. Victoria.”

Chapter 3: The Hotel Room

I didn’t let them leave. I didn’t care about the scene. I called Henry.

“Bring the car around. Now.”

“Sir?”

“Now!”

I took off my coat. I wrapped it around Elena and the boys. They tried to fight me, but they were weak from hunger.

“I am not taking you to a dungeon,” I said firmly. “I am taking you to a hotel. You need food. You need a bath. And we need to talk.”

“I can’t,” Elena whispered. “If she finds out…”

“Who? My mother?” I asked. “My mother is in Florida. She can’t hurt you.”

“You don’t know her,” Elena said. “You don’t know what she did.”

I got them into the car. The boys stared at the leather seats, wide-eyed.

“Is this a spaceship?” one of them asked.

“It’s a car, Leo,” Elena said, stroking his hair. “Just a car.”

I took them to the Peninsula. I booked the presidential suite. I didn’t take them to my penthouse. I didn’t want them in my space yet. I needed neutral ground.

When we got to the room, the boys ran to the fruit basket. They ate strawberries as if they were starving.

They were starving.

I ordered room service. Everything on the menu. Burgers, fries, soup, steak.

Elena sat on the edge of the sofa. She wouldn’t look at me. She looked at the floor.

“Why, Elena?” I asked, standing by the window. “Why did you leave? Why did you hide my sons?”

She took a deep breath. She reached into her pocket—the pocket of her filthy coat—and pulled out a piece of paper. It was folded, worn, and stained.

She handed it to me.

It was a letter.

Elena, If you are reading this, you know that Alexander doesn’t want you. He is too kind to say it, so I will do it for him. He has a future. You are an anchor. He knows about the pregnancy. He doesn’t want the children. He thinks they will ruin his career. He wants you to ‘take care of it’. If you leave now, quietly, I will give you $500,000 to start over. If you stay, I will sue you for infidelity. I have proof (falsified, of course, but effective). I will take the children the moment they are born, and you will never see them again. Go. Save yourself. Save them. Victoria Sterling.

I stared at the letter. It was my mother’s handwriting.

“She told me you hated me,” Elena whispered. “She showed me emails… emails from you… saying you wished I would disappear.”

“I never wrote those,” I said, my voice shaking with rage. “I loved you, Elena. I almost died when you left.”

“She said you hired a hitman,” Elena said, her voice trembling. “She said if I ever contacted you, she’d stop protecting me.”

“So you lived on the street?”

“I took the money,” Elena admitted. “The $500,000. I thought… I thought I could raise them. I moved to Ohio. I bought a small house.”

“Then what happened?”

“The money… it was dirty,” she said. “The IRS came a year later. They said it was laundered funds. They seized everything. The house. The accounts. I tried to get a job, but I had a record now. Fraud. No one would hire me.”

She looked at the boys.

“We lost the apartment last year. We’ve been… we’ve been moving around. Shelters. Parks.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” I cried. “Even if you hated me… for them?”

“I tried!” she screamed back. “I called your office! Your assistant… she said you had a standing order: ‘If that woman calls, hang up.’ She said you told her I was a stalker!”

I froze.

My assistant. Sarah.

Sarah had been hired by my mother.

It was a web. A spiderweb designed to keep me alone. To keep me focused on the company. To keep the “unworthy” woman away.

I looked at my sons. Leo and…

“What is his name?” I pointed to the other boy.

“Sam,” Elena said.

“Leo and Sam,” I repeated. “My sons.”

I walked over to them. They were eating fries dipped in chocolate sauce.

“Hey,” I said, kneeling down.

Leo looked at me. “Are you the bad man?”

“No,” I said, my heart breaking. “I’m not the bad man. I’m… I’m a friend.”

“Do you have more fries?” Sam asked.

“I have all the fries in the world,” I promised.

Chapter 4: The Sickness

We stayed in the hotel for three days.

I bought them clothes. I watched them bathe—the water turning gray with months of dirt. I watched Elena sleep for twelve hours straight, exhausted.

But something was wrong.

Leo was fine. He was energetic, curious.

But Sam… Sam was quiet. He tired easily. He had bruises on his arms that didn’t look like playground injuries.

On the third night, Sam coughed. It was a wet, rattling sound. He coughed until he threw up blood.

“Elena!” I shouted.

Elena ran in from the bedroom. She saw the blood. She didn’t look surprised. She looked defeated.

“We have to go to the hospital,” she said dully.

“What is it?” I asked, picking Sam up. He was burning hot.

“He’s sick, Alexander,” she whispered. “That’s why we were in the city. I was trying to get him into a free clinic. He has… he has Leukemia.”

I stared at her. “Leukemia?”

“Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia,” she said. “He needs chemo. He needs a bone marrow transplant. But I… I don’t have insurance. I don’t have an address. They treat him in the ER and send him away.”

“He’s dying?”

“He’s dying,” she sobbed. “And I couldn’t save him because I was too proud to call you. Because I was too scared of your mother.”

I held my dying son in my arms. I looked at the woman I loved, broken by a war I didn’t know we were fighting.

“He’s not going to die,” I said. “I own the hospital.”

Chapter 5: The Confrontation

We rushed Sam to Sterling Memorial Hospital. Yes, it was named after my father.

I bypassed the ER. I called the Chief of Oncology directly.

“I want him in the VIP wing,” I ordered. “I want the best team. I want the transplant list checked. Now.”

“Mr. Sterling, the list is…”

“I don’t care about the list!” I roared. “Test me. Test his brother. Test his mother. Find a match. Money is no object. If you have to fly a donor in from Mars, do it.”

They took Sam away. Elena went with him.

I stayed in the waiting room. I needed to make a call.

I called my pilot. “Get the jet ready.”

“Destination, Sir?”

“Palm Beach, Florida.”

I was going to visit my mother.

It was midnight when I arrived at my mother’s estate.

I didn’t knock. I used my key.

Victoria Sterling was sitting in her parlor, playing bridge with three other socialites. She looked up, surprised.

“Alexander?” she smiled. “What a lovely surprise! You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

I walked into the room. I looked at her friends.

“Get out,” I said.

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Vanderwaal gasped.

“Get out!” I shouted. “Now!”

They scrambled, grabbing their purses, fleeing the room.

Victoria stood up. “Alexander! Have you lost your mind?”

“No,” I said. “I found it.”

I threw the letter Elena had given me onto the card table.

“Did you write this?”

Victoria looked at the paper. She didn’t even flinch.

“Oh, that,” she sighed. “She kept it? Sentimental little thing.”

“Did you write it?”

“I did what I had to do,” Victoria said, sitting back down. “She was a distraction, Alexander. She was common. She was going to hold you back. You were destined for greatness. You couldn’t be tied down by a… a breeder.”

“A breeder?” I whispered. “She was my wife. And she was carrying my children.”

Victoria waved her hand. “And look at you now! You are the richest man in Chicago. You have everything.”

“I have nothing!” I screamed. “I have two sons I didn’t know existed! One of them is dying of cancer because his mother couldn’t afford a doctor! Because you stole her life!”

Victoria paused. “Dying? That’s unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?”

I walked over to her. I grabbed the table and flipped it. Cards and crystal glasses shattered on the floor.

“You are a monster,” I said.

“I am a mother!” she shrieked. “I protected you!”

“You protected your ego,” I said. “You wanted a King for a son. Well, congratulations, Mother. You got a King. And the first thing the King is going to do is exile the traitor.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m cutting you off,” I said. “The allowance. The house. The club memberships. It’s all in my name. It’s all gone.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I can,” I said. “And I’m pressing charges. Fraud. Extortion. Kidnapping by proxy.”

“I’m your mother!”

“No,” I said, turning away. “You’re just a woman who owes me a life.”

I walked out.

I flew back to Chicago.

I had a son to save.