Chapter 3
My thumb hovered over it.
For a long time, I stood on the sidewalk imagining what I would say.
Then his voice returned to me.
A mistake.
I put the phone away.
I never called.
I raised Noah and Lily alone.
I finished the research I had once abandoned.
I completed my postdoctoral work at Harvard.
I learned how to survive sleepless nights, fevers, grant deadlines, grocery bills, tantrums, loneliness, and two small children asking questions I was never ready to answer.
Eventually, I stopped waking up as Evelyn Moretti.
I became Dr.
Evelyn Carter again.
Six years later, I thought I was finally strong enough to return to Chicago.
Now Marcus Reed stood in front of me at O’Hare and told me the secret I had protected through every birthday, every Christmas, every nightmare, and every question about their father was no longer mine.
“How did he find out?”
I demanded.
Marcus hesitated.
That frightened me more than an immediate answer would have.
His eyes shifted past my shoulder.
I followed his gaze toward the terminal doors.
A black Rolls-Royce waited at the curb.
Two dark SUVs stood nearby.
Then the rear door of the Rolls-Royce opened.
My heart stopped.
Adrian stepped out.
Six years disappeared in one heartbeat.
He was thirty-nine now.
Broader through the shoulders.
Harder around the eyes.
The sharp black suit looked almost severe against the cold Chicago morning.
Something about him had changed in a way I could not immediately name.
Maybe the softness I remembered had been carved away.
Maybe I had only imagined it had ever existed.
People noticed him without understanding why they were noticing him.
Drivers looked away.
Security men straightened.
Marcus became subtly more alert.
Adrian ignored all of them.
He was looking at me.
Then his gaze dropped.
To Noah.
Adrian stopped walking.
My son squeezed my hand.
“Mom?”
I could not answer.
Noah had inherited pieces of me.
My mouth.
My stubbornness.
My habit of talking too fast when excited.
But standing a few feet from Adrian, the resemblance between father and son became almost brutal.
The same dark hair.
The same gray eyes.
The same tiny crease between their eyebrows when they were suspicious.
Adrian stared at him.
Then his gaze moved to Lily.
The color drained from his face.
That frightened me more than anger would have.
In all the years I had known Adrian Moretti, I had seen him threatened, wounded, furious, grieving, and cold enough to make grown men shake.