The Mother's Secret

Jake's POV

I sat in my car outside Emma's apartment building for twenty minutes before I could move.

My hands were gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles had turned white. My mother's words kept echoing in my head.

*"I gave her fifty thousand dollars to disappear."*

*"She took the money and left without a word."*

*"She sold you out."*

Fifty thousand dollars. That was the price of my son. The price of eight years of fatherhood.

And Emma had taken it.

I pulled out my phone—the spare one I kept in my glove compartment for emergencies. My regular phone was still in pieces on my office floor.

I should go up there right now. Pound on her door. Demand answers.

But something stopped me.

Maybe it was the way Emma had looked this morning when I confronted her. The pure terror in her eyes. The way her hands had shaken.

That wasn't the face of someone who had gleefully taken money to abandon me.

That was the face of someone who was still running. Still scared.

Scared of what