Chapter 2
The penthouse door handle turned once.
Then stopped.
Emily’s face went pale.
Lily, still heavy with sleep in my arms, gave a tiny murmur and pressed her cheek against my jacket as if she already knew fear had entered the room with the sound of that turning metal.
I lifted one finger to my lips.
Emily nodded, though her whole body trembled. For two years she had survived by reading danger in small things—the change in a guard’s footsteps, the scrape of a chair outside a locked door, the silence before someone came in pretending to be kind.
I understood that now.
The world I had lived in, full of contracts, boardrooms, polished marble, and expensive wine, had been nothing compared to hers. Hers had been a world where survival meant not trusting the sound of a key.
The handle turned again.
I stood slowly, shifting Lily against my shoulder. My heart was pounding, but I forced myself to breathe evenly. Panic would make me careless, and carelessness was the one thing I could not afford.
Emily backed away from the center of the room and moved behind the wall beside the bedroom entrance, half-hidden in shadow.
“Mr. Kincaid?” a voice called from the hallway.
Not my mother.
A man.
I recognized the voice a second later.
“Marcus?” I called.
“Yes, sir. Hotel security. Sorry to disturb you.”
I crossed the room and unlocked the door, opening it only a few inches. Marcus Hale stood outside in his navy hotel security uniform, rainwater still shining on his shoulders. He was in his late fifties, calm-eyed, careful, the sort of man most people underestimated because he never raised his voice.
I had hired him eight months ago, after learning he had once worked federal witness protection before retiring early to care for his wife. He had become my quietest ally.
His gaze flicked once to the baby in my arms.
He did not react.
That was why I trusted him.
“Everything all right, sir?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said.
Marcus kept his voice low. “Mrs. Kincaid’s driver is in the lobby.”
My stomach tightened.
“My mother is here?”
“No, sir. The driver says she sent him to bring you to dinner. But he isn’t one of her usual men.”
Behind me, Emily made the smallest sound.
Marcus’s eyes moved past my shoulder, not enough to stare, just enough to confirm that we were not alone.
May you like
Then he said, “There’s also a man sitting across the street in a black sedan. He’s been watching the front entrance for twenty minutes.”
I felt Lily’s little fingers curl against my collar.
