Chapter 2

When it hit me, I shoved the suitcase off my body and to the side.

A sharp scream rang out beside me.

"Ah!"

I paid no attention to the scream.

I scrambled up and reached to help Sophie, who had just broken my fall.

A hand clamped hard around my wrist, the grip tightening until I couldn't twist free at all.

I followed the hand up.

Richard's face was cold and set, his eyes fixed on me.

"When did you have a child? I want an explanation."

Blood was welling from the corner of Sophie's mouth.

I yanked the string of pearls off his wrist, and the beads scattered across the ground.

The grip on my wrist went slack at once.

I dropped to my knees beside Sophie, hands shaking as I dialed for an ambulance.

A weak hand came to rest lightly over the back of mine.

She gave a small shake of her head, her breath thin.

"I'm okay."

A lively girl's voice cut in from beside me.

"My suitcase isn't!"

I gathered Sophie against me and turned my head to look.

There was a scratch on the bottom of the suitcase, no bigger than a fingernail.

My daughter's face said she wasn't going to let it go.

"Pay up!"

My throat clenched, and I forced three words out of it.

"How much do I owe you?"

A tall figure stepped in front of me, and I closed my eyes for a moment, drained.

"How much are you going to make me pay this time?"

Richard clenched his back teeth, the line of his jaw hardening.

"Louise, that was our engagement token!"

My fingers stilled.

"Five hundred. I'll transfer it to you."

My tone was as level as if I were asking what was for dinner.

Richard went still for a moment.

He gripped the beads he'd just picked up, as if he wanted to say something.

But the instant Jacqueline brushed his fingertip, he came back to himself.

His eyes went to our daughter, and in the end he only pressed his lips together.

I went to look up his contact on instinct.

My fingers stopped. I remembered that I'd already deleted and blocked him.

I helped Sophie slowly over into the shade of a tree.

Only then did I go back to them and transfer the money.

My daughter looked back and forth between me and Richard, suspicious.

"You two know each other?"

The moment she said it, the air froze.

My eyelids trembled, and I pushed down the sting rising behind my eyes.

Jacqueline jumped in at once, her tone light.

"Why would you think that? How could your father possibly know some woman who can't even control her own bladder?"

My daughter let out a long breath.

My eyelid twitched.

The next second, her voice went off right beside my ear.

"Good. And here I thought a woman this far beneath us actually knew my dad."

Richard's lips moved, but the explanation on the tip of his tongue got swallowed back down.

The heart that was already riddled with holes still took another vicious cut.

I pressed down the taste of blood in my mouth and turned to take Sophie away from there.

Jacqueline's voice came from behind me.

"Wait. As sorry as we feel for you and your daughter,"

"haven't you forgotten something?"

I stopped where I stood.

A hand thinned to skin and bone patted me.

"Mom, go on. I'm fine."

Looking at that sweet, understanding smile, my nose stung.

Sophie's mother had looked out for me again and again in prison.

On her deathbed she handed me all her savings and asked me to take care of her daughter.

After my release I went straight to the orphanage and adopted Sophie.

More than ten years of every day together, and I had long thought of her as my own.

I held back the tears in my eyes and gently touched her face.

"Once Mom earns this last bit of money, I can take you abroad to get treated."