Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Delivered the Letter
Norah held Dominic’s gaze across the desk.
“Your mother.”
For several seconds, the city beyond the windows seemed to vanish.
There was only the old letter between them, Dominic’s hand resting beside it, and the sound of his breathing becoming dangerously quiet.
“My mother gave you this?”
“She didn’t write it,” Norah said. “At least, I don’t think she did. But she delivered it.”
Dominic’s expression did not change.
That was worse than anger.
Norah remembered that silence from five years earlier. It was the silence he used when someone had crossed a line they could never uncross.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I found out I was pregnant three weeks after you left for Montreal. I called your private number five times. No answer. Then I emailed the address your office had used when arranging our travel.”
“The email you showed me.”
“Yes.”
“Which was answered from a false account.”
“I didn’t know that then.”
Norah lowered herself into the chair opposite his desk. She had rehearsed this conversation in dozens of versions over the years. In some, Dominic apologized. In others, he accused her of lying. In most, she walked away before she could see whether the truth hurt him.
None of those imagined conversations had included the way he looked now.
Not angry.
Wounded.
“I received the message saying you wanted nothing to do with me,” she continued. “Two days later, your mother came to my apartment.”
Dominic’s fingers curled against the desk.
“My mother knew where you lived?”
“She knew everything. Where I worked. Which train I took. The name of my landlord. She knew my father had died and that my mother had been gone since I was fifteen.”
Norah saw the moment he understood how frightened she must have been.
“Elena told me she was trying to prevent something ugly,” Norah said. “She said you had made your decision, but other members of the Reyes family would not be satisfied with simply ignoring me.”
“What did that mean?”
“She never explained.”
“And you believed her?”
“I was twenty-eight, pregnant, alone, and sitting across from the mother of a man whose family appeared in newspapers beside words like indictment and organized crime. Yes, Dominic. I believed her.”
His eyes hardened at the last sentence, but he did not challenge it.
“She gave me the letter and offered me the money,” Norah said. “I refused it.”
“You kept the letter.”
“I kept every piece of evidence in case someone came for my child.”
Dominic looked down.
“My child,” he repeated.
The words came out raw.
Norah’s anger weakened for a moment.
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
“How?”
“I should have found you.”
“You searched for six months.”
His head lifted sharply.
“How do you know that?”
“Your mother told me.”
That answer appeared to strike him harder than the first.
Norah leaned forward.
“She came to see me again after Lily was born. I had moved to Worcester under my aunt’s name. Elena still found me.”
“What did she want?”
“To see the baby.”
Dominic pushed away from the desk and walked toward the windows. His shoulders were rigid beneath his black suit.
“She saw my daughter before I did.”
“Yes.”
“Did she hold her?”
Norah hesitated.
“Yes.”
Dominic placed one hand against the glass.
It was the smallest movement, but it exposed more grief than shouting could have.
“She cried,” Norah said quietly. “She held Lily for less than a minute. Then she told me never to return to Boston.”
Dominic turned.
“Why did you?”
“Because my aunt died. Because Mercy offered me a senior position. Because I was tired of organizing my life around people who might be watching me.”
“You should have come to me.”
“I thought you had paid your mother to make me disappear.”
“I would never abandon my child.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You knew me.”
Norah stood.
“I knew the man you were with me. I did not know the man everyone else described.”
The words landed between them.
Dominic looked as if he wanted to deny that those men were different.
He could not.
Norah picked up her purse.
“I didn’t come here to punish you. Lily spoke before I could decide how to tell you. Now you know.”
She had nearly reached the office door when Dominic spoke.
“Sit down.”
Norah stopped.
“No.”
“This is not finished.”
“It is nine forty-five. My neighbor is staying with Lily, and I promised I would be home before ten-thirty.”
Dominic reached for the phone on his desk.
He pressed a single button.
“Marco.”
The door opened almost immediately.
Marco Bell entered with the controlled readiness of a man who expected emergencies to begin before anyone announced them.
“Bring my mother here.”
Marco’s gaze moved from Dominic to Norah, then to the letter on the desk.
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
Marco nodded and left.
Norah stared at Dominic.
“She may not come.”
“She will.”
“You sound certain.”
“She has spent thirty-seven years teaching me that family obligations are not optional. Tonight she can follow her own rule.”
Norah folded her arms.
“I can’t stay for hours.”
“She lives twelve minutes away.”
“Of course she does.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means rich people always live twelve minutes away from wherever they need to control something.”
For the first time that night, something almost human moved through his expression.
It might have been amusement.
It disappeared quickly.
“Why did Lily know who I was?” he asked.
Norah looked toward the windows.
“She found an old photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“One of us.”
Dominic went still.
They had taken only a few photographs together. Their relationship had existed in hidden restaurants, borrowed weekends, private rooms, and the narrow spaces between Dominic’s obligations.
“Which one?”
“The harbor.”
He remembered immediately.
Norah had been laughing because the wind kept blowing her hair into his face. Dominic had complained until she threatened to throw his phone into the water. A tourist had offered to photograph them, capturing Dominic looking at Norah instead of the camera.
He had kept a copy in the locked drawer of his bedroom for five years.
“I told Lily you were someone I used to know,” Norah said. “She kept asking why you had her eyes. Last month, she heard me arguing with Elena on the phone.”
“You still speak to my mother?”
“She calls every few months.”
Dominic stared at her.
“She knows Lily?”
“She knows of her.”
“That is not the same answer.”
Norah’s mouth tightened.
“Elena sent birthday gifts. I returned most of them.”
“Most?”
“Lily kept a stuffed rabbit when she turned two.”
Dominic walked back to the desk and pressed both palms against its surface.
“My mother has had a secret relationship with my daughter while keeping her existence from me.”
“I would not call six phone calls in four years a relationship.”
“She watched her grow.”
“In photographs.”
“She has photographs?”
Norah regretted the admission immediately.
Before she could answer, the office door opened.
Elena Reyes entered wearing a charcoal coat over a cream dress. Her silver-streaked black hair was arranged perfectly, and a diamond rested at her throat. At sixty-two, she possessed the quiet authority of a woman who had spent her life in rooms where men underestimated her only once.
Her face changed when she saw Norah.
Then she saw the letter.
The color left her skin.
Dominic did not offer her a chair.
“You knew.”
Elena removed her gloves slowly.
“Dominic—”
“You knew I had a daughter.”
Elena’s eyes closed.
“Yes.”
The answer was barely audible.
Dominic picked up the letter.
“You delivered this.”
“Yes.”
“Did you write it?”
“No.”
“Did you create the false email?”
“No.”
“Did you intercept Norah’s calls?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
Elena looked at Norah, and something like regret moved through her eyes.
“I was told that Dominic had ended the relationship,” she said.
“By whom?” Dominic demanded.
Elena did not answer.
Dominic walked around the desk.
“Five years ago, someone used my office, my family, and your obedience to steal my child from me. You will give me a name.”
Elena lifted her chin.
“I was trying to keep them alive.”
The room changed.
Norah felt it immediately.
Dominic did not move.
“Them?”
Elena’s gaze dropped to the letter.
“Norah and the baby.”
“What threat was made?”
“A photograph was delivered to my house.”
“Of what?”
“Norah leaving St. Matthew’s Women’s Clinic.”
Norah’s stomach turned.
She had gone to that clinic only once, two days after confirming the pregnancy.
“The photograph had a message written on the back,” Elena continued. “It said that accidents happen to women who carry children into the wrong families.”
Dominic’s face became terrifyingly calm.
“Where is the photograph?”
“I burned it.”
“You destroyed evidence?”
“I was frightened.”
“You were Elena Reyes.”
“I was a mother.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“So you protected your son by helping someone erase his child.”
“I protected you by keeping you from starting a war you could not win then.”
“Who threatened her?”
Elena looked toward the windows.
“I cannot prove it.”
“I asked for a name, not proof.”
Her shoulders lowered slightly.
“Victor.”
Norah had heard the name before.
Victor Reyes was Dominic’s uncle, vice chairman of Reyes Holdings, and one of the few men in Boston powerful enough to stand beside Dominic without appearing smaller.
Dominic showed no surprise.
That frightened Norah more than anything else.
“Why would Victor care whether I had a child?” she asked.
Elena turned toward her.
“Because Lily is not only Dominic’s daughter.”
Norah waited.
Elena’s next words were spoken with visible effort.
“She is the legal heir to everything Victor has controlled since Dominic’s father died.”
Silence followed.
Dominic looked at his mother.
“What are you talking about?”
Elena’s eyes filled with a fear she had hidden for five years.
“Your father changed the family trust before his death. If you had a biological child, Victor’s temporary authority over the harbor companies, the foundation, and the hospital properties would end.”
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“When?”
“The moment paternity was legally established.”
Norah thought of Lily standing in the hospital corridor, declaring the truth loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“How many people heard her today?” Elena asked.
“Too many,” Dominic said.
Marco reentered the office holding a tablet.
His expression had changed.
“Dominic.”
“What?”
Marco placed the tablet on the desk.
A photograph filled the screen.
It showed Lily leaving Mercy Community Hospital that afternoon, holding Norah’s hand.
The image had been taken from across the street.
Beneath it was a single message.
THE CHILD SHOULD HAVE STAYED HIDDEN.
Dominic stared at the screen for three seconds.
Then he reached for his coat.
May you like
“Where are you going?” Norah asked.
“To get my daughter.”
