Chapter 1 - The Call I Never Wanted Made
Pain exploded behind my right eye so suddenly that for one second I thought somebody had fired a bullet through the window. I was standing over a set of blueprints in the home office of the little Craftsman house I had rented outside Seattle, arguing silently with a contractor’s measurements, when the coffee mug slipped from my fingers. Ceramic shattered across the hardwood. The room tilted. I reached for the drafting table, but my hand caught empty air. My knees struck first, then my shoulder, and somewhere far away I heard one of my daughters scream.
“Mom?”
Hazel reached me first. Eight years old, dark hair falling loose around her shoulders, gray-blue eyes enormous with fear. Iris was only seconds behind her. People always called them identical until they spent more than five minutes together. Hazel rushed toward trouble. Iris studied it before moving. In that moment, both reactions collided.
“Mommy, wake up!”
I tried.
I could hear them. I could even feel Iris’s small hand pressing against my cheek. But my mouth would not form words, and the right side of my body felt disturbingly heavy.
“Call Mrs. Peterson,” I tried to say.
What came out was barely sound.
Iris grabbed the emergency phone we kept on the desk. “I’m calling 911.”
Hazel took my personal cell. She knew the passcode because it was their birthday: 1214.
That was my second mistake.
My first had happened eight years earlier when I kept one phone number I should have erased forever.
Hazel scrolled through the emergency favorites. Mrs. Peterson. My office manager. Dr. Wen.
Then she found a name pinned above every one of them.
GRIFFIN DRAKE.
“Who’s Griffin Drake?”
Terror cut through the haze in my skull.
“No,” I managed.
Hazel didn’t hear me.
Or maybe she thought I was saying something else.
She pressed call.
Three rings.
Then the voice I had spent eight years trying not to remember filled the room.
“Sloan?”
My heart hurt before my head did.
Griffin Drake.
Seattle called him many things. Shipping magnate. Nightclub owner. Waterfront investor. Men who knew the city after midnight called him something else.
The Wolf of Elliott Bay.
I had loved him once.
Maybe part of me still did.
That was why I had run.
“My mommy fell down,” Hazel cried. “She won’t wake up.”
Griffin’s voice changed instantly.
Not louder.
Worse.
Focused.
“Who is this?”
“Hazel.”
“How old are you, Hazel?”
“Eight.”
A silence followed.
“When is your birthday?”
“December fourteenth.”
I heard Griffin breathe.
Once.
Hard.
Behind him came the slam of a vehicle door and male voices barking instructions.
“Hazel, tell me your address.”
She did.
I wanted to stop her.
Couldn’t.
“Good. Now listen carefully. Your sister called emergency services?”
Hazel looked at Iris.
“She’s talking to them now.”
“Lock every window you can reach. Don’t open the door except for paramedics. Do you understand?”
Hazel frowned. “Why?”
“I’m coming.”
“Why do you care about Mommy?”
Another pause.
Longer.
“Because she once meant everything to me.”
My eyes filled.
Eight years vanished.
Griffin on a Seattle rooftop with rain in his hair. Griffin bringing me midnight coffee while I worked late at my architecture firm. Griffin telling me that if he ever had a family, he wanted a house where people laughed at dinner.
Then blood on his shirt one night.
A rival’s car exploding near Pioneer Square.
A terrified detective warning me that whoever loved Griffin Drake eventually became leverage.
And me staring at a positive pregnancy test less than forty-eight hours later.
I had left him one voicemail.
I’m sorry. I accepted a job in Boston. Don’t look for me.
A lie.
I had changed jobs, cities, addresses, and eventually my last name.
But I never deleted his number.
Hazel sat beside me.
“Mister Griffin?”
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
“Iris says we have your eyes.”
Everything inside me froze.
Iris snapped her head around.
“I said maybe.”
Hazel ignored her.
“Are you our daddy?”
Silence.
Even through the pain I could hear how completely the question changed him.
“What did you say?”
“Mom never told us who our dad is.”
Iris came closer, still talking to 911 with the phone pressed against her shoulder.
“But we saw an old picture once,” Hazel continued. “There was a man with Mom. He looked like us.”
I closed my eyes.
The photograph.
I thought I had destroyed it.
Apparently I had hidden it badly.
“How old are you exactly?” Griffin asked.
“Eight.”
“You said December fourteenth.”
“Yes.”
Another terrible silence.
Nine months before that date, Griffin and I had spent our last night together.
He knew.
Maybe not proof.
But enough.
Then his voice turned different again.
Cold.
Controlled.
Dangerous.
“Hazel, listen to me. Look at your mother’s desk.”
She stood.
“Okay.”
“Do you see a black envelope?”
My eyes flew open.
Black envelope?
Hazel looked around at the scattered blueprints, broken coffee mug, and papers knocked from the desk.
Then she saw it.
Under a wet architectural plan.
Black paper.
Silver wax crest.
She picked it up.
My heart started hammering.
“Read what’s on the front,” Griffin said.
Hazel hesitated.
“We know who the girls are.”
Griffin swore quietly.
I had never seen that envelope.
Somebody had placed it inside my locked house.
Today.
Maybe minutes before I collapsed.
Griffin’s voice became command.
“Put it down. Don’t touch anything else.”
Hazel obeyed.
The first ambulance sirens reached the street.
Then Griffin asked something that terrified me more than the envelope.
“Sloan, can you hear me?”
I forced my lips to move.
“Yes.”
It came out slurred.
Hazel gasped. “Mom!”
Griffin heard me.
“Sloan.”
There was anger in my name.
And fear.
“How long has your head hurt?”
I blinked.
How could he know?
“Today.”
“Any unusual taste? Smell? Dizziness?”
My stomach dropped.
The coffee.
The mug.
I tried to remember.
Bitter.
Strangely metallic.
“Coffee.”
Griffin inhaled sharply.
Then spoke to someone beside him.
“Get Dr. Vale to Harborview. Toxicology team. Now.”
Hazel stared at the phone.
“How do you know what happened?”
Griffin’s answer came slowly.
“Because somebody tried the same thing on me six months ago.”
My blood turned cold.
This was not a migraine.
Someone had poisoned me.
And Griffin already knew who might be responsible.
Paramedics pounded on the door.
Iris ran to unlock it.
Hazel remained beside me.
“Are you really our dad?”
Griffin did not answer immediately.
Then he said the only thing he could say without lying.
“I think I might be.”
My eyes filled.
The paramedics rushed in.
One asked who Griffin was.
Hazel answered before I could stop her.
“Our dad.”
Across the phone, Griffin went completely silent.
Then a man shouted in the background, “Helicopter’s ready.”
Hazel looked toward the window.
“Helicopter?”
Griffin’s voice returned.
“I’m eight minutes away.”
Eight years of hiding.
Eight years of telling myself my daughters were safer without him.
Eight years destroyed by one phone call.
As the paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher, Griffin spoke one last time.
“Sloan.”
I turned my face toward the phone.
“They found you because of me.”
The admission was barely above a whisper.
“But I swear to you, nobody is touching those girls.”
Then the call ended.
May you like
Outside, thunder rolled over Seattle.
And somewhere above the city, the most feared man I had ever loved was flying toward two daughters he had never known existed.
