Chapter 6
I looked again at the photograph.
Then I looked toward the crowded terminal behind us.
Hundreds of faces.
Any one of them might have watched us walk past.
Noah tugged gently on my sleeve.
“Mom, who is that man?”
Nobody moved.
Adrian looked at me.
I looked at my son.
There was no version of the next thirty seconds that did not change all our lives.
I crouched until I was level with Noah and Lily.
“This is Adrian.”
Lily peeked around me.
Noah looked from Adrian to me and back again.
There was intelligence in his eyes far beyond what I wanted him to understand.
“Is he the man from the pictures?”
My heart stumbled.
I had kept three photographs of Adrian in a box hidden at the back of my bedroom closet.
Apparently, not hidden well enough.
“Yes.”
Noah swallowed.
Then he asked the question I had dreaded since the day he learned what the word father meant.
“Is he our dad?”
Adrian closed his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them again, they were shining.
I had never seen Adrian Moretti cry.
He did not cry then either.
But I saw how close he came.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Noah stared at him.
Lily moved even closer to me.
Adrian did not approach them.
He did not demand anything.
He simply stood on the curb like a man who had just been shown a life he had already missed.
Then he looked at me.
“Come somewhere secure until we understand what Vanessa was doing.”
“No.”
“Evelyn.”
“I am not getting into your car because you say so.”
His jaw flexed.
Six years earlier, that expression would have intimidated me.
Now it only made me angry.
“You do not get to order me around anymore.”
“I’m not trying to order you.”
Marcus actually glanced at him as though even he found that claim ambitious.
I almost laughed.
“You sent three men into an airport to intercept me.”
“I sent them because I didn’t want you walking outside without protection.”
“You didn’t even know I was coming.”
“I knew yesterday.”
“How?”
His eyes shifted to my luggage.
“Your name appeared on a passenger manifest.”
I stared at him.
“That is deeply disturbing.”
“I know.”
“No, Adrian, I don’t think you do.”
His expression tightened.
Then he did something the Adrian I remembered rarely did.
He stepped backward.
“You choose where we go.”