Chapter 6 - Learning to Be a Father
Danger didn't disappear because the villains were arrested.
Neither did fear.
Three weeks after Sophie's kidnapping, I stood in Dominic's kitchen watching the most feared man in Chicago lose an argument to a three-year-old over pancakes.
“They're circles,” Dominic said.
“They're supposed to be bunnies.”
“They have ears.”
“One ear.”
Dominic examined the mutilated pancake.
“That could be artistic interpretation.”
Sophie looked at me.
“Mommy, Daddy can't cook.”
Dominic pointed the spatula at her.
“Daddy can hear.”
She giggled.
I didn't.
Not because I wasn't happy.
Because happiness frightened me.
Dominic noticed.
He always noticed.
Later, when Sophie was playing, he found me on the terrace.
“You're leaving.”
It wasn't a question.
“I found an apartment.”
His jaw tightened.
“You're safe here.”
“That's not the point.”
“Then tell me the point.”
I turned.
“The point is I don't know who I am around you.”
“You're Claire.”
“You call me Elena in your sleep.”
Pain crossed his face.
I hadn't meant to tell him.
But it was true.
“You loved her.”
“I did.”
“And I'm supposed to compete with her?”
“You are her.”
“No.”
My voice broke.
“Elena is a seventeen-year-old girl in photographs. I'm twenty-eight. I have a daughter. I hate olives. I cry during stupid commercials. I work two jobs when I need to. I don't know your favorite movie or what you were like at nineteen.”
Dominic stepped closer.
“I don't want seventeen-year-old Elena.”
“Then what do you want?”
“You.”
Silence.
“Claire Bennett,” he continued. “The woman who threatened to hit me with a lamp when I suggested Sophie needed private security. The woman who reorganized my library because my system offended her. The woman who drinks coffee so sweet it should legally qualify as dessert.”
I almost smiled.
He didn't.
“I loved Elena.”
He touched his chest.
“She lives here.”
Then his hand lowered.
“But I'm falling in love with Claire.”
My breath caught.
“Don't.”
“I tried.”
“Try harder.”
“No.”
That made me angry.
“You don't get to decide this.”
“I know.”
“Then stop saying things like that.”
“I spent eleven years believing you were dead. Then I found you and lost you again. I'm finished pretending I feel nothing because it makes other people comfortable.”
Before I could answer, Sophie opened the terrace door.
“Mommy!”
We turned.
She held a sheet of paper.
“Look!”
Three stick figures.
This time the man and woman weren't holding hands.
Sophie had drawn herself between them, holding both.
Under Dominic was one word.
DADDY.
I crouched.
“Did someone teach you that?”
She shook her head.
“Daddy Dominic.”
Dominic looked away.
His eyes were wet.
That evening, I agreed to stay another week.
One week became three.
Dominic learned bedtime stories.
Badly.
He gave every character a threatening Chicago accent.
Sophie loved it.
He attended her preschool family day and terrified three fathers merely by existing.
He let her paint his fingernails pink.
Marco photographed it.
Dominic threatened Marco's life.
Marco kept the photograph.
And slowly, something impossible happened.
The mansion became warm.
Then Dr. Hale resurfaced.
He had disappeared before federal agents could arrest him.
Marco found surveillance footage showing Hale entering a storage facility two days before the warehouse confrontation.
Inside the unit, investigators found medical records.
Mine.
There were dozens of sessions.
Drugs.
Hypnosis.
Memory suppression.
But the final page contained something worse.
Subject E.M. pregnancy suspected.
The date was four days before I disappeared from Dominic's estate.
Dominic stared at the paper.
“He knew.”
“Yes.”
“If Salvatore knew you were pregnant—”
“He would have known Sophie existed.”
Marco entered.
His expression told us something was wrong.
“We found another file.”
He placed a photograph on the table.
Sophie at six months old.
Taken through the window of my old apartment.
Then another at eighteen months.
Another at two years.
Someone had watched her entire life.
On the back of the final photograph were handwritten words.
When she turns four, the inheritance activates.
Dominic looked at me.
“What inheritance?”
I suddenly remembered my father's voice.
Not from adulthood.
From childhood.
If anything happens to me, Elena, everything goes to you.
I looked at Sophie.
May you like
Her fourth birthday was eleven days away.
And whatever Anthony Moretti had left behind was about to become hers.
