Chapter 2 - THE QUESTION CLAIRE HAD FEARED FOR SEVEN YEARS
“Can I keep the suit?”
For several seconds, nobody answered.
Sophie stood in the middle of Vincent Rowan’s study wearing the crooked black tie, the oversized fedora, and the charcoal jacket she had buttoned wrong.
Vincent looked at Claire.
Claire looked at her daughter.
Finally Vincent said, “Yes.”
Sophie brightened.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“The hat too?”
Vincent glanced at Claire.
Apparently this required parental jurisdiction.
Claire gave a tired nod.
“The hat too.”
Sophie smiled.
Then Daniel Cross, Vincent’s security chief, appeared at the door.
He was forty-three, broad-shouldered, and normally capable of making grown men reconsider bad decisions by simply looking at them.
Sophie handed him the photograph.
“Don’t bend it.”
Daniel stared at the picture.
Then at Vincent.
Something flickered across his face.
Vincent noticed.
“Downstairs.”
Daniel immediately concealed whatever he had seen.
“Come on, kid.”
Sophie took two steps, then turned back.
“Mr. Rowan?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t answer.”
Vincent already knew.
“Answer what?”
She tilted her head.
“Do I look like you?”
Claire closed her eyes.
Vincent looked at Sophie.
Seven years old.
Gray eyes.
Cleft in the chin.
A familiar crooked half-smile.
And Natalie’s habit of tilting her head whenever silence went too long.
His voice came out quieter than expected.
“Yes.”
Sophie smiled.
“Good.”
Then she left.
Daniel closed the study door behind them.
Vincent waited until the footsteps disappeared.
Then he looked at Claire.
“Is she mine?”
Claire did not pretend she misunderstood.
“Yes.”
One word.
Eight years of buried grief split open beneath it.
Vincent turned away.
He put both hands against the desk because suddenly standing without something solid seemed unreasonable.
“How old?”
“You know how old.”
“I want the dates.”
Claire swallowed.
“She was born February ninth. Seven years ago.”
Vincent calculated automatically.
Natalie had disappeared from Chicago eight months before that.
Vincent had been told she died in Prague six weeks after she left.
He looked at Claire.
“She was alive.”
“Yes.”
“When I was told she was dead.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
Claire’s eyes filled.
“Almost a year.”
The room became dangerously quiet.
Vincent had broken men for lies smaller than that.
Yet the person in front of him was the woman who had tied Sophie’s shoes, packed school lunches, sat through fevers, dentist appointments, nightmares, birthdays.
Anger did not simplify that.
“Who are you to Natalie?”
Claire hesitated.
Then answered.
“Her sister.”
Vincent stared.
“Her what?”
“Half sister.”
He almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
“Natalie Mercer told me she had no family.”
“She had very little.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“No.”
Claire folded her hands.
“My mother had Natalie when she was nineteen. Different father. Natalie was eleven years older than me.”
“And Ellis?”
“My father’s name.”
“Why did she hide you from me?”
“She didn’t.”
That stopped him.
Claire continued.
“She talked about you.”
“What did she say?”
“That you were difficult.”
Despite everything, Vincent nearly smiled.
“That sounds like her.”
“She said you hated being late, hated sweet coffee, and pretended you didn’t like children because children asked questions you couldn’t intimidate them out of.”
Vincent looked toward the door Sophie had just walked through.
Also accurate.
Claire’s expression changed.
“She loved you.”
“Then why disappear?”
“Because she was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“No.”
The answer came instantly.
Vincent went still.
“Then who?”
Claire walked toward the photograph.
She turned it over.
On the back was nothing.
At first.
Then she carefully lifted one edge where the paper had separated from a second layer of backing.
A thin line of handwriting appeared.
Vincent recognized Natalie’s hand.
Claire peeled it farther.
Three words emerged.
JULIAN LIED FIRST.
Vincent’s face hardened.
Julian Rowan.
His cousin.
His underboss.
The man currently controlling two lakefront trucking routes and three South Side crews.
The man who had sat beside Vincent at Natalie’s memorial Mass even though no body had ever been returned.
“What does that mean?”
Claire’s voice shook.
“Natalie told me Julian was the person who informed you she died.”
Vincent remembered.
Julian standing in this house eight years earlier.
Twenty-nine then.
Pale.
Holding a folder from a private security contact in Europe.
Plane crash.
Small charter flight.
Natalie among the passengers.
No recoverable remains.
Vincent had believed him.
Because Julian was family.
Because grief wanted certainty.
“Where did Natalie go?”
“Wisconsin.”
“Why?”
“She was pregnant.”
Vincent turned.
“You knew?”
“Not at first.”
“When?”
“Three months after she left.”
“Why didn’t she contact me?”
Claire’s eyes filled.
“She tried once.”
“When?”
“Before Sophie was born.”
Vincent waited.
“She called your private number.”
“I never received it.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because someone answered.”
Vincent felt cold.
“Who?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“She said if I ever learned the name, I would become part of it.”
Vincent hated sentences like that.
“What part?”
“The people watching her.”
Silence.
Claire reached into her pocket.
She had apparently been carrying something since Sophie entered the study.
A small hospital bracelet.
Yellowed with age.
BABY GIRL MERCER.
February 9.
Milwaukee.
Vincent touched it with one finger.
His daughter.
His daughter had existed inside a hospital eight years ago while he mourned a woman who was still alive.
“What happened to Natalie?”
Claire’s face broke.
“Her heart.”
He looked up.
“She developed cardiomyopathy after Sophie was born. She kept putting off treatment because she was afraid somebody would find them.”
“When did she die?”
“Sophie was nine months old.”
Real death.
Not Prague.
Not a plane crash.
A small hospital outside Milwaukee.
Claire continued.
“I was twenty-four. I took Sophie.”
“You became her mother.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know?”
“No.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
“She believes you gave birth to her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she was a baby.”
“And later?”
“Because every year it became harder.”
That he understood more than he wanted.
Claire wiped beneath one eye.
“Natalie left instructions.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“She said if I ever believed Sophie was being watched, I should bring her close to you.”
Vincent stared.
“That’s why you came here.”
“Three years ago, a man photographed Sophie outside preschool.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Vehicle?”
“Black SUV.”
“Plate?”
“Covered.”
“So you applied for a job inside my house.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling me who you were.”
“Yes.”
Vincent laughed once.
“You used my security without trusting me.”
Claire looked him directly in the eye.
“I trusted your walls.”
That landed.
Not him.
His walls.
“Did Natalie leave anything else?”
Claire hesitated.
Vincent noticed.
“Claire.”
“She left me one letter.”
“Where?”
“Not here.”
“Bring it.”
“No.”
The word came fast.
Vincent’s expression changed.
Claire did not move.
“She wrote it to Sophie.”
“Then I’m not asking to read Sophie’s letter.”
“She also wrote something for you.”
“Then bring that.”
Claire shook her head.
“Not until I know whether she was right.”
“About what?”
“That the man who separated you from her was still sitting at your table.”
Vincent’s phone vibrated.
Once.
Daniel.
He answered.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“I checked the staff corridor camera.”
Vincent looked at Claire.
Daniel continued:
“That box Sophie found?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t on the lower closet shelf yesterday morning.”
Claire’s face changed.
Vincent’s voice hardened.
“Who moved it?”
Daniel was silent for half a second.
Then:
“Julian.”
Vincent looked at Natalie’s photograph again.
Julian had told him she was dead.
Julian had hidden the truth for eight years.
And sometime that afternoon, Julian Rowan had deliberately put the one photograph capable of exposing Sophie within reach of a seven-year-old child.
The study door opened before Vincent called for him.
Julian stood there.
No coat.
No smile.
He looked at the photograph in Vincent’s hand.
Then at Claire.
May you like
Then said the last thing Vincent expected.
“Natalie begged me to lie to you.”
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