LOGINThe unexpected slap Sarah stared at the unknown number until it stopped ringing.Nathan was watching her. She could feel it. She set the phone face down on the table and looked up at him and said, “I’ll deal with that later.”He didn’t push. He looked at her for a moment in the way he had been looking at her lately… like he was trying to work something out and wasn’t quite there yet, and then he looked down at Alex who had gone completely slack against his arm, mouth slightly open, fully asleep.“I should get him home,” Nathan said.“Yes,” Sarah said.He shifted carefully so he could lift Alex without waking him, stood with the boy draped over his shoulder the way fathers carried sleeping children, heavy and boneless and completely trusting. He picked up the backpack from the floor. And left.She closed the door after him and stood with her hand on it for a moment. Then she went and sat back down in the chair and picked her phone up and turned it over.The unknown number had not left
Chapter Twenty Two: Scandal Sarah didn’t move.She stood in the middle of her sitting room and looked at the small boy on her sofa and felt the floor shift slightly underneath her.Then she approached him slowly.“No, sweetheart,” she said finally, and her voice came out gentler than she expected. “I’m not your mummy. But you’re safe here.”Something in his face shifted. Not disappointment exactly. More like a door closing quietly on something he’d been carrying a long time. He nodded once and looked down at the backpack in his lap.Madam Cassy appeared at Sarah’s shoulder. “I’ll get him something to eat,” she said under her breath, and disappeared back to the kitchen before Sarah could respond.Adin had settled himself on the far end of the sofa with a book he wasn’t reading, close enough to be present without making anything of it. Sarah looked at her son for a second and felt a quiet rush of something she didn’t have a name for.She sat down in the chair across from Alex.“How d
Chapter Twenty One: Issue Addressed Nathan was ready by one.He had spent the morning going over exactly what he was going to say, not because he needed to rehearse it but because he wanted it clean. No room for misinterpretation, no loose ends the press could pull at afterward. The DNA results were clear. The statement was simple. He was going to walk into that room at two o’clock, say what needed to be said, answer a few questions, and walk back out. Thirty minutes at most. Then it was done.He dressed carefully. Dark suit, no tie. He wanted to look like a man addressing a business matter, not performing a crisis. His assistant had called that morning to confirm the room was set and the right people had been notified. The financial press was present, two national outlets, three entertainment journalists who had been running the story hardest. Let them all be in the room when he shut it down.He knocked on Alex’s door at half past one.“I’ll be back by four,” he said through the do
Chapter Twenty : Mrs Reed Sarah was up before the kids that morning.She stood in the kitchen in the quiet making coffee she didn’t particularly want, just to have something to do with her hands. The apartment was still and pale with early light and she could hear Madam Cassy moving around in the back room, the small sounds of someone else starting their day. She had made the decision sometime between three and four in the morning, in that restless half-sleep where decisions tend to get made — the kids were not going to school today. Not until she had a better sense of who was watching and why.She got them up, told them without explanation, and left Madam Cassy with strict instructions about the door.Then she got dressed and went to work.She knew something was off the moment she stepped out of the lift.The office floor had a particular energy on normal mornings — focused, busy, people moving with purpose — and this was not that. This was the energy of a floor where something had h
Chapter Nineteen: Not The Biological Father Nathan had not been able to focus on a single thing all day.He had snapped at his everyone, He moved through three meetings without retaining anything that was said in any of them. His responses had been adequate, the correct words assembled in the correct order, but there was nothing behind them. He was operating entirely on the surface of the day while something underneath kept pulling at him and refusing to be named or set aside.He knew what it was. He simply did not want to look at it directly.He had picked up his phone to call the doctor four times and put it back down each time because he could not answer the basic question of what he actually wanted to hear when someone picked up. That was the thing he kept running into. He was a man who built every decision around a clearly defined desired outcome, who never entered a room without knowing exactly what he was working toward. And yet every time he sat with the question of what he w
A Burner phone Across the city Sophie sat at her desk with the phone number on the screen in front of her. She had been running traces on it for the last forty minutes. Burner phones left almost nothing to work with. No registration, no billing address, no network history that pointed to a real person or a real location. She had known within the first ten minutes that it was going to come back empty but she ran it anyway because she had told Sarah she would, and because Sophie had learned over the years that empty results still told you something. Someone who knew how to use a burner phone and stay off a trace was not acting on impulse. Whatever this was, It had been thought through. The message had not been sent in a moment of anger. It had been sent by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and had prepared carefully for the possibility of being looked for.She picked up her phone and called.Sarah answered before the second ring."I didn't find anything," Sophie said. "I
Chapter TwelveSarah was walking out of the building when her phone rang.She glanced at the screen-Sophie. She almost let it ring out. It had been a long day and all she wanted was to get to the school before the pickup rush, collect her kids, and just breathe. But Sophie didn't call unless it mat
Chapter Seven: Illegitimate SonNathan froze when he opened his phone and saw the photograph on the screen.Number one trending.Alex, his son, smiling as if the world was still the same as always, standing right beside Sarah’s child. The resemblance was so brutal it hurt to look at. Almost twins.
Chapter FourteenSarah walked slowly to the door. Her hands weren't shaking yet but something in her chest had already tightened, the way it always did when something was about to go wrong. She gripped the handle and pulled it open.The world stilled.Her mouth hung open.Standing at her doorstep w
Chapter ThirteenSarah's phone buzzed against the conference table.She had been mid-sentence when she felt it. She held up a finger, glanced at the screen and every other thought left her head.Mom, could you come to the school? Someone is following us.She knew her son. Adin did not send messages







