Chapter 3 - Eight Years of Silence
Victoria shook her head immediately.
“She is lying.”
Sarah almost laughed.
Eight years of exhaustion stood between them.
Eight years of working double shifts.
Eight years of missing meals so Leo never did.
Eight years of birthdays where she invented reasons his father could not attend.
“I wish I were lying.”
Victoria turned desperately toward Julian.
“You knew me back then.”
“I did.”
“You know I would never do something like that.”
Julian’s voice remained calm.
“That is exactly why I want to know what happened.”
Conrad stepped between them.
“This conversation does not belong in a ballroom.”
Julian looked around at the guests.
“You’re right.”
Then he turned toward the hotel’s security director.
“Close the ballroom.”
Conrad stiffened.
“You cannot order my employees around.”
Julian gave him a humorless smile.
“Check your company’s debt agreement.”
Conrad said nothing.
Everyone in the room understood.
Sterling Hotels looked wealthy.
But Vance Capital held the loans keeping the company alive.
Sarah had never known that.
She had assumed Victoria’s family controlled everything.
Victoria apparently wanted everyone else believing the same thing.
Julian approached Sarah.
“I want you and Leo somewhere safe.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“Tonight you might.”
Sarah looked at him sharply.
“Why?”
Julian glanced toward Conrad.
“Because somebody buried a letter for eight years and suddenly ordered the archive containing it destroyed.”
That silenced her.
Leo tugged Sarah’s sleeve.
“Mommy, can we go home?”
Sarah crouched.
“Yes, baby.”
Julian swallowed at the word baby.
Sarah noticed.
For three months, he had been trying to learn how to become Leo’s father.
He had attended soccer practice.
He had learned Leo hated peas.
He had sat through a two-hour school play despite Leo appearing for less than forty seconds.
But Sarah still remembered seven years of empty chairs.
The past did not disappear because the truth had become complicated.
Julian arranged for them to leave through a private elevator.
As Sarah stepped inside, Victoria called after her.
“You think you won?”
Sarah turned.
Victoria’s eyes were full of something far more frightening than embarrassment.
“You have no idea what you just walked into.”
The elevator doors closed.
Twenty minutes later, Sarah and Leo reached their apartment in Queens.
The front door was already open.
Sarah stopped breathing.
She pushed Leo behind her.
Their small living room had been torn apart.
Drawers were overturned.
Photographs covered the floor.
But nothing expensive was missing.
Someone had been searching for something.
Sarah ran toward the bedroom.
The metal box beneath her bed was gone.
Inside that box had been Leo’s original birth certificate, hospital records, and every document from the year he was born.
On the pillow rested a single white card.
Sarah picked it up.
May you like
Three words had been typed across the center.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT.
