Chapter 1

I spent twenty years searching for my daughter, only to learn she had died ten years ago.

The moment Job Finch put the file in my hands, I turned through it page by page, and I dropped to the floor, sobbing.

At ten years old she was sent to an orphanage. She scavenged for scraps and washed dishes, and she clawed her way into a top high school.

Through those three years she tutored on the side and worked at a coffee shop, and she put herself through college.

But half a year after she graduated, she was dead.

When she died, her name wasn't a clean one. An accidental pregnancy, a hemorrhage, and a scandal that she'd seduced some rich man's son.

Job helped me to my feet and looked at me, uneasy.

"Ms. Harding, there's one more file here, about the young miss's boyfriend. You should see it."

I wiped my eyes, and the instant I took the file, I went rigid.

The first page bore the name of the successor I had groomed with my own hands, my current son-in-law: Phil Whitney.

1

I couldn't accept it. I stared at the file and flipped ahead in a panic.

Graduate of Harbor State University. Born June 4, 1996. Registered residence: Ashwin Children's Home, Fairview County.

After a long while, I lifted my head and turned my gaze to Old Finch.

He stepped forward at once and spoke gravely.

"Ms. Harding, I went to Fairview County myself to look into it. Mr. Whitney is the boyfriend your daughter grew up with in that orphanage."

As he said it, he handed me a small photograph.

In it, a young girl and boy pressed their heads close together, smiling, happy.

The girl's face was so familiar that my tears fell again all at once.

The girl was Layla Harding at eighteen, and the boy, though he'd shed the softness of youth and taken on a moneyed poise, was still unmistakably Phil.

I pressed the photo hard against my chest and wailed.

"My girl. My baby. Mama is so sorry."

Back then my husband had died young, and to keep us fed I ran a stall alone at the night market, with Layla tied to the cart behind me.

All because one customer kept pestering me, and when I turned around, my three-year-old daughter was gone.

I searched like a woman gone mad for seven days and seven nights, and found nothing.

For years I traveled everywhere running my stall while I looked for her.

Later, business slowly picked up, and I opened a trading company.

For something to hold on to, I adopted an orphan who looked faintly like my daughter, Eliana Harding.

She was sweet and sensible, made it through college without trouble, and married a fine young man from the company.

That young man was Phil Whitney.

I never imagined he'd been that close to my own flesh and blood.

If he really was my daughter's childhood sweetheart, then was the child in her belly his? And how much of her death was on him?

And what had that scandal really been?

I wiped my eyes, slowly straightened, and my voice went hard.

"Job, keep digging into everyone and everything the young miss dealt with before she died. I want to know how she really died."

"Whatever it costs."