Chapter 2 - THE QUESTION HE WAS AFRAID TO ASK“No argument?”
Sienna stared at Declan across the elevator.
“No argument,” he said.
The doors opened on the employee parking garage.
She stepped out first.
He did not follow immediately.
That surprised her.
Seven years earlier, Declan had followed her everywhere.
Across campus.
Into grocery stores.
Through arguments.
Once, after a fight about whether he was wasting his life working nights at a mechanic’s shop, he had sat outside her apartment in freezing rain for three hours because she refused to answer the door.
The man behind her now waited until she turned.
“Saturday,” Sienna repeated. “Five.”
“I’ll be there.”
“I choose the restaurant.”
“Yes.”
“Public place.”
“Yes.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“You’ve changed.”
Declan’s expression tightened.
“You have no idea.”
He walked away.
Sienna stood beside her twelve-year-old Honda watching him cross the garage.
One of his bodyguards appeared from behind a concrete pillar.
Then another.
A black SUV pulled forward.
Declan climbed inside.
The vehicle disappeared.
Only then did Sienna realize she had been holding her breath.
“Mom?”
She spun around.
Lily stood beside Mrs. Alvarez, Sienna’s elderly downstairs neighbor.
Her six-year-old daughter wore a purple winter coat, sparkly sneakers, and the two uneven braids Sienna had rushed through at seven that morning.
“What are you doing here?”
Mrs. Alvarez raised one eyebrow.
“You forgot your phone at my apartment when you dropped Lily off.”
Sienna pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Right.”
Then Lily looked toward the disappearing SUV.
“Who was that?”
“Nobody.”
Mrs. Alvarez’s eyebrow climbed higher.
Sienna hated perceptive people.
Lily frowned.
“He looked at you.”
“A lot of people look at me.”
“Not like that.”
Sienna stared at her daughter.
“You are six.”
“I’m almost seven.”
“In four months.”
“Still.”
Sienna took her phone.
“Thank you, Mrs. Alvarez.”
The older woman leaned closer.
“That nobody looked very expensive.”
“Please don’t.”
“Fine.”
But Lily was still staring toward the garage exit.
And for one horrible second, Sienna imagined Declan standing beside her daughter.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
The tiny cleft in Lily’s chin that Sienna’s mother insisted came from nowhere.
She had spent six years avoiding that comparison.
Saturday arrived too quickly.
Sienna chose Marino’s.
Not elegant.
Not romantic.
A neighborhood Italian restaurant where the tables were close together and half the staff knew her because the emergency department ordered food there on night shifts.
Declan was already seated when she arrived.
No bodyguards visible.
Sienna removed her coat but kept her purse beside her.
He noticed.
“You think you’ll need to run?”
“I think seven years teaches a person to keep her keys nearby.”
He absorbed that.
A waiter approached.
Sienna ordered iced tea.
Declan ordered coffee.
“No alcohol?” she asked after the waiter left.
“I don’t drink anymore.”
“You used to.”
“I used to do several things.”
She waited.
He looked at her.
“I owe you the beginning.”
“You owe me all of it.”
“Yes.”
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then:
“My father found me.”
Sienna frowned.
“Your father was dead.”
“That’s what my mother told me.”
Her stomach tightened.
Declan had grown up with one photograph of his father.
A blurry man standing beside a motorcycle.
His mother, Evelyn Voss, claimed the man died before Declan turned three.
“He wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Where was he?”
“Chicago.”
“Doing what?”
Declan gave her a tired look.
“You saw the men with me.”
“Answer anyway.”
“He ran an organization.”
“What kind?”
“You know.”
She did.
But hearing him say it mattered.
“Crime?”
“Yes.”
Sienna leaned back.
Seven years earlier, Declan Voss had been a twenty-three-year-old accounting student with oil beneath his fingernails because he repaired cars to pay tuition.
Now he had bodyguards.
A scar.
A coat worth more than her car.
“Your father was Mafia?”
“He would have called it business.”
“What do you call it?”
“A mistake I inherited.”
That answer unsettled her.
“What happened the day you disappeared?”
Declan stared at his coffee.
“My mother called me at 8:14 that morning.”
Sienna remembered.
He had kissed her in the kitchen at 7:40.
She had complained that he used the last milk.
He promised to buy more.
Then he never came home.
“She told me my younger cousin had been in an accident.”
“You never mentioned a cousin.”
“I didn’t know he existed.”
Declan continued.
“She asked me to meet her at a motel outside Milwaukee.”
“Why?”
“She said she was scared.”
“So you went.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“When I walked into that motel room, three men were waiting.”
Sienna’s hands went cold.
“They took your phone?”
“Yes.”
“They threatened you?”
Declan looked at her.
“They shot my mother.”
Sienna stopped breathing.
“What?”
“Not fatally.”
He rubbed his thumb over the edge of the coffee cup.
“But enough to explain the rules.”
“Jesus.”
“My father was there.”
“What did he want?”
“A son.”
Declan laughed once without humor.
“He had spent twenty years pretending I didn't exist because my mother refused to raise me in his world. Then his older son was killed.”
“So suddenly you mattered.”
“Yes.”
“As an heir.”
“Yes.”
Sienna hated how calmly he said it.
“What does that have to do with disappearing from me?”
His eyes finally met hers.
“Everything.”
He said his father had known about Sienna.
Her nursing-school schedule.
Her apartment.
Her mother’s address.
Even the diner where she and Declan ate breakfast on Sundays.
“My father put photographs on the motel table.”
Sienna’s skin prickled.
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That if I went home, you would become leverage.”
She swallowed.
“And you believed him.”
“One of the photographs had been taken through your bedroom window.”
Her stomach dropped.
“You never told me.”
“I had no way to contact you safely.”
“For seven years?”
The anger returned instantly.
“One week? Fine. A month? Maybe. But seven years?”
Declan nodded.
“You're right.”
“I’m not asking to be right.”
“I know.”
“Then explain.”
He reached inside his coat slowly.
Sienna tensed.
He placed an old envelope on the table.
Her name was written across the front.
In Declan’s handwriting.
She recognized it.
She had once watched those hands scribble grocery lists on the backs of electricity bills.
The envelope had been opened.
Not by her.
“I wrote to you eleven days after I disappeared.”
Her heart hammered.
“What did it say?”
“Read it.”
Her hands shook as she unfolded the paper.
Sienna,
I am alive.
The first sentence nearly destroyed her.
I didn’t leave you because I stopped loving you. There are people around me who will use anything I love to control me. Right now, that means you.
I need time to get away from them.
Please do not look for me.
I know how cruel that sounds.
I am sorry.
If I can make this safe, I will come back.
If I cannot, believe one thing: I did not choose to disappear from you.
She stopped reading.
“You sent this?”
“Yes.”
“I never got it.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because three weeks later I got an answer.”
Declan placed another envelope down.
Sienna recognized her old apartment address.
The return handwriting was not hers.
Inside was a single typed paragraph.
Declan,
Sienna knows you are alive. She does not want further contact. She has decided that whatever life you chose is not something she wants near her. Do not write again.
Sienna stared.
“I didn’t write this.”
“I know now.”
“Who did?”
“I thought your mother.”
“My mother?”
“The envelope was mailed from her neighborhood.”
Sienna’s face heated.
“My mother hated you.”
“Yes.”
“But she would never—”
She stopped.
Wouldn't she?
Her mother had called Declan reckless.
Unreliable.
“Too intense.”
When he disappeared, she had been the first person to say:
Maybe this is a blessing, Sienna.
“You believed it?”
Declan looked ashamed.
“I was twenty-three, trapped inside a family I had never known existed, and the one thing keeping me functional was the idea that I could eventually come back to you.”
He looked at the fake letter.
“When this arrived, I believed you had chosen survival over me.”
Sienna’s eyes burned.
“And you just accepted it.”
“No.”
He gave a bitter smile.
“I broke three ribs trying to leave two weeks later.”
She went still.
“What?”
“My father’s men brought me back.”
“Declan…”
“I stopped trying openly.”
The man across from her suddenly looked different.
The scar.
The bodyguards.
The strange stillness.
She had thought he became powerful.
Maybe power had begun as imprisonment.
“What happened to your father?”
“Dead.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
“Then why not come back three years ago?”
That was the question.
Declan’s expression closed.
“Because by then I knew you had a child.”
Every muscle in Sienna’s body tightened.
He watched her.
“You found out?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“A photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“Your hospital’s charity run. Two years ago.”
Sienna remembered.
Lily had sat on her shoulders near the finish line.
A hospital photographer posted the image.
Declan continued.
“You were holding a little girl.”
Sienna said nothing.
“I looked at the date.”
No.
“Then I looked at her age.”
No.
“Sienna.”
She stood.
“Dinner is over.”
He looked up.
“You said until seven-thirty.”
“I changed my mind.”
“That was one of your rules.”
“Yes.”
She grabbed her coat.
Declan did not stop her.
That almost made it worse.
She reached the aisle.
Then he said quietly:
“I never had the right to ask from a photograph.”
She stopped.
“So I didn't.”
“Good.”
“But today…”
Her hand tightened around the chair.
“When you walked past me in the ER, I saw a picture inside your locker.”
She closed her eyes.
A photograph of Lily.
Kindergarten picture.
Dark hair.
Deep brown eyes.
Same tiny line between the eyebrows when she tried not to smile.
Declan’s voice broke.
“Sienna, how old is your daughter?”
She turned.
“Don't.”
“I need to know.”
“No.”
“Please.”
The restaurant noise seemed to disappear.
Sienna had prepared for this moment for six years.
She had imagined anger.
Denial.
Control.
She had never imagined Declan asking softly.
“She’s six.”
His face changed.
“When is her birthday?”
Sienna looked at him.
“April third.”
Declan’s lips parted.
He counted backward.
Of course he did.
His eyes closed.
“Sienna.”
She hated how broken her name sounded.
“Is she mine?”
For seven years, Sienna had carried two truths.
Declan disappeared.
Lily belonged to her.
Now those truths had collided.
She whispered:
“Yes.”
Declan opened his eyes.
Sienna expected accusation.
Instead, the most intimidating man in the restaurant looked as if someone had removed the floor beneath him.
“I have a daughter.”
“Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since seven weeks after you disappeared.”
His eyes filled.
“You thought I was dead.”
“For months.”
“And after?”
“I thought you had abandoned us.”
His face broke.
Sienna continued before courage failed.
“I tried to find you.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
She reached into her purse.
Pulled out her phone.
Opened a photograph she had kept for six years.
A positive pregnancy test beside an envelope addressed to Declan.
“I mailed you this.”
He took the phone.
The color left his face.
“I never got it.”
“I sent four letters.”
“None.”
“I called your mother.”
Declan looked up.
“What?”
“She told me you were dead.”
Silence.
The restaurant seemed to tilt.
“She told you what?”
“Three months after you disappeared.”
Declan stood.
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
“She said you had been killed in a car accident outside Milwaukee.”
His chair scraped backward.
“Sienna, my mother knew I was alive.”
“I know that now.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“She was living with me then.”
They stared at each other.
Suddenly the forged letter mattered differently.
The false death mattered differently.
Someone had spent seven years making sure neither of them found the other.
And that person had been close enough to both sides to know exactly which lie would hurt most.
Declan's phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His face changed.
“What?”
Sienna asked.
He answered.
“Frankie.”
A man spoke rapidly.
Declan went still.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Keep her there.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?”
Declan looked at Sienna.
“My mother was found unconscious in her house.”
Sienna’s anger vanished.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“They don't know.”
He grabbed his coat.
Then stopped.
For once, he did not assume she would follow.
“My men found something beside her.”
“What?”
“A box.”
“What kind of box?”
May you like
He swallowed.
“Every letter you ever sent me.”
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