Chapter 1 - Eight Months Missing
Harper Reed walked into Mateo Falcone’s office and whispered, “I came back.”
Mateo turned with a bourbon glass in his hand.
A silver drive slipped from Harper’s fingers onto his desk.
Eight numbers had been scratched into its metal casing.
Mateo looked at her pregnant stomach.
Everything changed.
The bourbon glass struck the marble floor.
It did not shatter cleanly. One thick piece rolled beneath the enormous walnut desk while amber liquid spread across the black-and-white marble.
Nobody moved.
Liam Russo, Mateo’s head of security, stood near the double doors with one hand inside his jacket. Three other men in black suits watched Harper as though she had walked in carrying a bomb.
Perhaps she had.
Harper had spent 243 days imagining this moment.
In none of those versions had Mateo looked afraid.
Angry, yes.
Cold, certainly.
She had imagined him ordering Liam to search her. She had imagined being handcuffed, interrogated, perhaps dragged into one of the rooms nobody in Chicago admitted existed.
She had even imagined Mateo shooting her himself.
She had never imagined him staring at her stomach.
“Harper.”
His voice sounded different.
She swallowed.
“I brought the ledgers.”
She opened her handbag slowly.
Every man in the room tensed.
“Easy,” Liam warned.
Harper gave him a tired look.
“If I wanted to kill him, Liam, I probably wouldn't have chosen eight months pregnant as my tactical advantage.”
One of the guards almost reacted.
Mateo did not.
“Let her.”
Harper removed the encrypted silver drive and placed it beside the leather-bound books stacked on Mateo’s desk.
“There.”
Mateo never looked at it.
“The original files,” Harper said. “Account histories. Access logs. Shell-company transfers. Copies of everything I took that night.”
Silence.
“I never sold them.”
Mateo took one step toward her.
“I know.”
Harper stopped breathing for a second.
She had rehearsed dozens of explanations during the eleven-hour drive to Chicago.
That sentence had not appeared in any of them.
“What?”
“I know you didn't sell them.”
“You don't know anything.”
“I know Simon framed you.”
The name landed harder than she expected.
Simon Gorski.
Mateo's second-in-command.
The man who had smiled at Harper every morning for nearly two years.
The man who brought her coffee during quarterly audits.
The man who had recommended her personally when Mateo needed an independent forensic accountant to examine unexplained losses across six legitimate companies.
The man who, Harper eventually discovered, had manufactured an entire trail of evidence leading directly to her.
Her hand instinctively moved over her belly.
“Simon is dead,” she said.
“Yes.”
“That’s why I came back.”
Something passed through Mateo's expression.
“You heard?”
“Three days ago.”
“How?”
“I still know how to read newspapers.”
“Simon’s death wasn't in the newspapers.”
Harper froze.
Liam looked at Mateo.
Mateo's gaze sharpened.
“Who told you?”
Harper realized her mistake.
She had promised herself she would reveal information in order.
She had been inside the penthouse for less than three minutes, and already that plan was collapsing.
“A message.”
“From whom?”
“I don't know.”
“Show me.”
“I deleted it.”
Mateo came closer.
She fought the instinct to retreat.
Once, she had known precisely how Mateo smelled when he stood this close: cedar, expensive soap, and whatever cologne he wore so lightly that she had never learned its name.
Eight months had not erased the memory.
That angered her more than his questions.
“Four months,” Mateo said.
“What?”
“I found proof Simon altered the access logs four months ago.”
Her face went blank.
For four months she had slept in motel rooms with furniture pushed against doors.
For four months she had avoided hospitals because she feared using her real identity.
For four months she had paid cash at clinics two states away.
For four months she had believed that somewhere behind her, Mateo Falcone was hunting her because he wanted his stolen files back.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn't tell me?”
His jaw tightened.
“I couldn't find you.”
“You're Mateo Falcone.”
It came out more bitterly than she intended.
“You find everybody.”
“I found Simon.”
“And?”
Mateo held her stare.
“He died before he could tell me where you were.”
A chill moved across Harper's shoulders.
“You killed him.”
“No.”
She searched his face.
Mateo had lied to judges.
He had lied to police.
He had lied to rival families.
Harper knew because she had seen enough paperwork to understand how his world survived.
But Mateo had almost never lied to her.
That had been one of the dangerous things about him.
He preferred silence to lies.
“How did he die?”
“Someone put two bullets into him outside a warehouse in Cicero.”
“Who?”
“If I knew, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”
Harper looked toward the drive.
“You have the evidence now.”
“I told you. I don't care about the drive.”
“You cared eight months ago.”
“Eight months ago I thought you stole twenty million dollars.”
“I didn't.”
“I know.”
“You thought I betrayed you.”
“I was wrong.”
Mateo Falcone did not apologize.
Not to employees.
Not to enemies.
Probably not to priests.
Harper waited.
He said, “I was wrong about you.”
It was as close as he knew how to come.
Her eyes burned unexpectedly.
She hated that too.
Mateo saw it.
His expression softened for half a second.
Then the baby moved.
Hard.
Harper inhaled sharply and pressed her palm beneath her ribs.
Mateo's eyes dropped.
The office disappeared from his face.
No Simon.
No ledgers.
No twenty million dollars.
No empire.
Only her stomach.
“How far?”
She had known the question was coming.
“Mateo.”
“How far, Harper?”
“Eight months.”
The color left his face.
Liam slowly looked away.
Mateo stared at the curve beneath Harper's palm.
Eight months.
She could almost watch him count.
Their last night together had been nine days before she disappeared.
It had happened after midnight in Mateo's private apartment above the office.
There had been no promises.
That had been their rule.
Whatever existed between them could not survive his world, and Harper had been determined not to become one more person owned by Mateo Falcone.
Then six days after fleeing Chicago, she had gotten sick in a gas-station bathroom outside Indianapolis.
Two tests later, she had learned she was pregnant.
Mateo lifted his eyes.
“Is it mine?”
Harper said nothing.
His voice dropped.
“Harper.”
She had imagined telling him hundreds of times.
Sometimes she screamed it.
Sometimes she cried.
Sometimes she simply placed an ultrasound photograph in his hand.
Reality was quieter.
“Yes.”
Mateo did not move.
Harper saw his throat work.
Behind him, Liam lowered his hand from inside his jacket.
“The baby is yours,” she said.
Mateo turned away.
For one terrifying second Harper thought he was angry.
Then she understood.
He needed somewhere else to look.
His hand gripped the desk.
“When?”
“I found out six days after I left.”
His shoulders became rigid.
“You knew for eight months.”
“I was running for my life.”
“From me.”
“Yes.”
The word hurt him.
Good, Harper thought.
Then immediately hated herself for thinking it.
Mateo turned back.
“I would never hurt you.”
“You sent men after me.”
“To bring you back.”
“Armed men.”
“Everyone who works for me is armed.”
“That isn't reassuring.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I suppose it isn't.”
She looked at him.
For once, there was no easy power in his expression.
Only regret.
Then Liam's phone vibrated.
He checked it.
His face changed.
“Boss.”
Mateo did not look away from Harper.
“What?”
“We have a problem.”
“Handle it.”
“I think you'll want this one.”
Mateo finally turned.
Liam held out his phone.
Security footage filled the screen.
Someone had entered the underground garage seventeen minutes earlier.
A black sedan.
No license plates.
The driver remained inside.
A passenger stepped out.
Harper leaned closer.
Her blood turned cold.
“No.”
Mateo looked at her.
“You recognize him?”
Harper backed away from the screen.
“That’s impossible.”
“Who is he?”
She could barely form the words.
Because she had seen that man before.
Eight months ago.
In the records room.
He had been one of the two armed men who came to kill her.
Harper pointed at the screen.
“He works for Simon.”
Liam's eyes hardened.
“Simon is dead.”
“I know.”
The elevator indicator outside the office chimed.
Everyone turned.
The private elevator was rising.
Floor 31.
Floor 32.
Floor 33.
Mateo reached beneath his jacket.
Harper heard the elevator stop.
May you like
The doors began to open.
And a dead man's voice said her name.
