Chương 2
“You’ll take Emma from me.”
“She isn’t yours.”
“She is more mine than she has ever been yours.”
Marcus could have silenced her with a look. He had spent years teaching rooms what happened when somebody mistook restraint for weakness.
Instead he looked at Emma.
She was watching him closely, one cheek pressed against the bear’s head. Grace used to watch him that way when he entered a room angry—never shrinking, never provoking, measuring the distance between who he was and what he might do.
Marcus stepped away from Karen and crouched again so Emma would not have to look up at him.
“Did your mother tell you I would hurt you?”
Emma’s fingers tightened.
“She said you might not believe me.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“She said you were dangerous.”
Lily inhaled sharply.
Marcus kept his eyes on Emma.
“Was she wrong?”
The girl looked at his tattoos, his suit, Jonah by the SUV, the men waiting inside it.
“I don’t know.”
It was the most honest answer anyone had given him in years.
Marcus stood.
“We’re going to a house in Old Town. Karen rides with you. Lily rides with me. No one separates you. No one searches you. You can leave after we establish whether somebody is following you and after Karen tells me why my dead wife’s daughter is carrying a letter addressed to me.”
Karen looked ready to refuse again.
Emma touched her wrist.
“Aunt Karen.”
Karen closed her eyes.
That was how they got into the vehicles—not because Marcus ordered it, but because a frightened child asked the woman protecting her to stop running.
The house in Old Town did not belong to Marcus on paper. It had once been a narrow brick mansion with carved stone above the windows. Years earlier, his attorneys had purchased it through a company that owned three parking structures and a failing gym. The first floor looked like a wealthy man’s idea of comfort: gray furniture nobody used, framed abstract art selected by a designer, a kitchen stocked by employees who never ate there.
Lily went directly to the pantry.
“Can Emma have apple juice?”
Karen remained in the foyer with one hand on Emma’s shoulder.
“She’s fine.”
“That means no?” Lily asked.
Emma glanced at Karen.
“I like apple juice.”
Lily opened the refrigerator and frowned at the rows of bottles.
“Dad, there’s only the little ones.”
“They’re still apple juice.”
“The straws bend.”
“That’s generally considered useful.”
Lily gave him the patient look she reserved for adults who had missed an obvious point. She took two bottles anyway.
The ordinary exchange made the room stranger. Marcus had expected revelation to change the laws of movement, to make every gesture heavy with consequence. Instead Lily struggled with a plastic wrapper while Emma stood beneath a painting of three blue squares and watched her.
Marcus removed his jacket. He folded it over the back of a chair rather than handing it to anyone.
“Jonah.”
The bodyguard had been waiting near the hallway.
“Sir.”
“Kitchen.”
Jonah followed him through the doorway. Marcus closed the door but left the glass panel uncovered. From where Karen sat, she could see them. She could not hear.
Marcus faced Jonah.
“You knew the name would mean something before the girl finished saying it.”
Jonah’s expression remained flat.
“It meant something to everyone who worked for you then.”
“You froze.”
“I was surprised.”
“You were afraid.”
Jonah looked past him at the backyard. A rusted child’s swing hung from a maple branch, left by the previous owner because Lily liked it.
“I was there when Mrs. Blackwell’s car was found.”
“So was I.”
“I saw what it did to you.”
“That isn’t why you froze.”
Jonah said nothing.
Marcus placed both hands on the kitchen island. Grace had once accused him of making silence a weapon because it saved him from choosing the wrong words. He had told her silence only frightened people who had something to hide.
She had laughed without humor.
Everybody has something to hide, Marcus.
“Look at me,” he said.
Jonah did.
“Did you know she survived?”
“No.”
“Did you know Karen survived?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see that child?”
“No.”
“Did you know Grace was pregnant with twins?”
For the first time, Jonah hesitated long enough to become guilty.
Marcus felt his grip tighten against the stone.
“Answer.”
“I knew there were complications.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Dr. Vale told your uncle there had been two heartbeats early in the pregnancy. Later, I heard one had been lost.”
“Heard from whom?”
“Victor.”
Marcus released the island. There was a white mark across his palm where the edge had pressed.
His uncle had stood beside him in the hospital when Lily was placed in his arms. Victor had said Grace had lost too much blood during delivery but was stable. Twelve hours later, Grace left the hospital against medical advice. Twenty minutes after that, her car exploded beneath a rail viaduct on the Near West Side.
Marcus had received the call while holding Lily.
The child had been wrapped in a hospital blanket with purple footprints printed along the edge.
“Why didn’t you tell me there had been two heartbeats?”
Jonah’s answer came carefully.
“You had a newborn. Your wife was dead. Victor said the second fetus had not developed. It did not seem useful.”
“Useful.”
“I made the wrong decision.”
Marcus looked through the glass. Lily had found paper and was drawing something for Emma. Karen watched the hallway. Emma kept one hand on the teddy bear and held her apple juice in the other.
“You made the decision Victor needed.”
Jonah’s eyes sharpened.
“You believe he knew?”
“I believe I have a dead wife who apparently learned how to write letters.”
Marcus returned to the sitting room.
Karen had not touched the water placed in front of her.
“The letter,” Marcus said.
Emma looked at her.
May you like
Karen nodded once.
Marcus opened it at the dining table. The paper inside was covered in Grace’s handwriting, but only one side contained words.
