Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN HE LEFT BEHIND
“Mommy!”
The little boy’s voice cut through the gala like a bell.
Anna Bennett Moretti turned just as a three-year-old child in a navy velvet suit raced across the marble floor. She dropped to one knee and opened her arms. The boy collided with her, laughing, and wrapped his small hands around her neck.
“Leo,” she whispered, pressing her cheek to his hair. “You have to walk, sweetheart. No running in a room this crowded.”
“But I saw you!”
“I’m right here.”
Across the ballroom, Vincent Moretti stopped breathing.
He had spent three years learning how to live with a grave that held no body. Three years imagining the final seconds of a woman he had promised to protect. Three years waking in the dark with the sound of an explosion trapped inside his skull.
Now Anna was standing beneath the chandeliers, alive, holding a little boy who looked at her as if she were the entire world.
Vincent shoved through the crowd.
“Anna!”
She looked up.
For a single heartbeat, neither of them moved. He saw the familiar curve of her mouth, the faint scar near her eyebrow from a childhood fall, and the guarded expression that had replaced the warmth he remembered.
Then her face went pale.
She rose, lifted Leo into her arms, and stepped backward.
“No,” she whispered.
Vincent reached for her. “Anna, it’s me.”
“I know who you are.”
Her voice was steady, but her hands tightened around the child.
Sophia Carter appeared behind Vincent, her champagne glass trembling. She had been standing beside him when he saw Anna, and now she looked as though she had seen a ghost.
“Vincent,” Sophia breathed. “We need to leave.”
He ignored her.
“Anna, where have you been? We buried you.”
“You buried an empty coffin.”
His face twisted with pain. “I searched for you.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“After you took her out first?”
The question struck harder than any accusation he had imagined.
Vincent looked at Leo. The boy had dark hair and gray eyes. His small face held a resemblance Vincent could not explain away.
“How old is he?” Vincent asked.
Anna turned her body, shielding Leo from him.
“Don’t.”
“Anna, please. How old is he?”
“He’s my son.”
Vincent’s gaze dropped to the child’s hand, resting against Anna’s collar. Three years. The dates assembled themselves in his mind with terrible precision.
“Our son?”
Anna said nothing.
Leo looked between them. “Mommy, who’s that man?”
Anna kissed his temple. “Someone I used to know.”
Vincent flinched as though she had struck him.
Sophia stepped forward, forcing a brittle smile. “Anna, this is an extraordinary misunderstanding. We all thought—”
“Don’t speak to me,” Anna said.
The room had gone quiet around them. Guests were pretending not to listen while doing nothing else. At the far end of the ballroom, a photographer lowered his camera.
Vincent tried again. “I never stopped loving you.”
Anna’s eyes filled, but she did not let the tears fall.
“You promised you would come back for me.”
“I tried. The plane exploded.”
“You chose Sophia first.”
“I thought I could get her out and return in time.”
“And you left me in a burning aircraft while I was carrying your child.”
“I know.”
“No, Vincent. You know the story you tell yourself. You don’t know what happened after you ran away.”
She turned toward the exit.
Vincent moved into her path, then stopped when he saw her expression. For the first time in his life, the man who could command an entire room understood that he had no right to demand anything from the woman in front of him.
“Please,” he said. “Just tell me you’re alive. Tell me he’s safe. Tell me what happened.”
Anna’s eyes flicked toward the security guards stationed near the ballroom doors. She seemed to calculate how quickly she could get Leo outside.
“I survived,” she said. “That is all you need to know.”
She walked away.
Vincent watched her disappear into the crowd, carrying the son he had never met.
Behind him, Sophia whispered, “This can’t be happening.”
Vincent turned slowly toward her.
May you like
For three years, he had believed the explosion had taken everything from him. Now he understood that someone had been keeping the truth from him.
And he was going to find out who.
