Part 2
“What did you say her father’s last name was…?”
For one frozen second, the office seemed to fold in around me.
The low hum of the heater beneath the window grew louder. Somewhere outside the door, a man laughed quietly and then fell silent. Lily made a small sound in her sleep, her fingers curling against Roman’s suit jacket.
I could have lied.
A safer woman would have lied.
A woman with more money, more choices, more protection, more room to make mistakes would have said anything else. She would have invented a last name or pretended she hadn’t heard the question.
But I was tired.
So tired that fear had begun to feel like a room I had lived in too long.
I looked at Roman Callahan, at the sharp lines of his face, at the eyes that had made grown men lower their heads in the hallway, and I whispered, “Price.”
His expression did not change at first.
That was almost worse.
He simply stood there, very still, as if something inside him had stopped moving.
“Caleb Price,” I said, because once the first truth slipped out, the rest followed before I could stop it. “That’s the name he gave me.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“The name he gave you,” he repeated.
I nodded slowly.
His gaze dropped to Lily again.
Her little mouth was open slightly. A strand of dark hair stuck to her cheek. She looked impossibly small beneath his jacket, surrounded by expensive leather furniture, polished wood, and a world that had never been meant for children.
Roman moved closer to the couch.
Not fast.
Not threatening.
But every step made my heart beat harder.
“How old is she?” he asked.
“Almost fifteen months.”
His eyes closed for the briefest moment.
Seventeen months ago, Caleb had disappeared.
Fifteen months ago, Lily had been born.
The math sat between us like a third person.
Roman opened his eyes again. “What was his middle name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
The question was quiet, but shame burned up my throat anyway.
“No,” I said. “I asked once. He joked that only people in trouble use middle names.”
A shadow crossed Roman’s face.
“That sounds like him.”
I gripped the edge of the desk behind me. “Like who?”
Roman did not answer immediately.
He looked at Lily with such careful attention that I suddenly felt as though I was watching a man standing in front of a door he had spent nearly two years trying not to open.
Then he said, “My brother’s full name was Caleb Roman Callahan.”
The room tilted.
I shook my head before I could think. “No. No, that’s not possible.”
Roman’s eyes came back to mine.
“He used different names when he wanted distance from the family.”
“Price?”
“Our mother’s maiden name.”
My hands went cold.
The office was too warm. My dress shirt stuck against my back. I could smell coffee, leather, faint smoke from Roman’s coat, and the sweet powder scent from Lily’s diaper bag.
I tried to put the man I had loved beside the man standing in front of me.
Caleb, with grease on his hands, sitting on the floor of my tiny kitchen fixing a broken cabinet hinge because he couldn’t stand the way it squeaked.
Caleb, laughing when Lily kicked beneath my ribs.
Caleb, holding my face between his hands and telling me I made him want a life he didn’t think he deserved.
That Caleb did not belong to Roman Callahan’s world.
But maybe that was the first lie I had believed.
Roman turned and walked to the window. Beyond the glass, Chicago looked gray and hard beneath the winter sky. Snow had gathered along the ledges of neighboring buildings in uneven lines, dirty from the city air.
“What did he tell you?” he asked.
His voice was controlled again.
Too controlled.
“He told me he had no family.”
Roman’s shoulders stiffened.
“He said both his parents were gone,” I continued. “He said he grew up moving around. Foster homes. Friends’ couches. Jobs under the table. He didn’t talk about the past much.”
“That part was always easy for him.”
I swallowed. “Easy?”
“Vanishing inside a story.” Roman’s reflection in the glass looked colder than the man in the room. “Caleb could become anyone if he needed to.”
A painful little laugh escaped me. “Are you saying everything was a lie?”
Roman turned back.
“No,” he said. “Not everything.”
I wanted to believe him. The part of me that still remembered Caleb’s hands resting over my stomach needed to believe something had been real.
But fear had already started rearranging every memory.
The garage.
The borrowed car.
The nights he disappeared for hours and came back quiet.
The old phone he never let me touch.
The way he always sat facing the door.
I had thought those things meant he had been hurt before.
I had not considered that they meant he was hiding.
Lily stirred, her face scrunching. Instinct pulled me toward her. I crossed the room and knelt beside the couch, touching her back gently.
“It’s all right, baby,” I whispered. “Mama’s here.”
Her lashes fluttered but did not open. She settled again with a small sigh.
Roman watched us with an expression I could not read.
I became suddenly aware of how close he was, how much power he had, how little I understood about the ground beneath my feet.
I stood slowly.
“Is she in danger?” I asked.
Roman did not pretend to misunderstand.
“I don’t know.”
The honesty frightened me more than a comforting lie would have.
“From who?”
He looked toward the closed door, as if measuring what could be said aloud inside his own office.
“From anyone still looking for Caleb.”
My throat tightened. “You said he stole from men who don’t forgive.”
“He did.”
“What did he steal?”
Roman’s mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Not money.”
That answer left too much space behind it.
I hugged my arms around myself. “Then what?”
Before Roman could answer, someone knocked.
Not gently, like before.
This knock was sharp. Two taps. A pause. One more.
Roman’s face closed again.
“Come in.”
The door opened and a tall man in a charcoal coat stepped inside. I had seen him before downstairs, speaking quietly with the security staff. He looked older than Roman by at least ten years, with silver at his temples and the steady posture of someone who noticed everything and reacted to almost nothing.
His eyes flicked to me, then to Lily, then back to Roman.
“We have a problem,” he said.
Roman’s expression did not shift. “Not here.”
The man hesitated.
“That’s why I’m saying it here.”
A cold silence settled over the room.
Roman walked toward him. They spoke too quietly for me to catch every word, but I heard enough.
“…camera…”
“…back entrance…”
“…someone asked for her by name.”
My stomach dropped.
Roman’s eyes lifted to mine.
The older man followed his gaze and seemed to understand something had changed.
“Who is she?” he asked.
Roman did not look away from me.
“Someone under my protection.”
The words should have comforted me.
Instead, they made everything feel more real.
I stepped forward. “Someone asked for me?”
The older man glanced at Roman, waiting.
Roman nodded once.
He turned to me. “A man came through the service alley twenty minutes ago. Asked one of the kitchen staff whether a woman named Elena Mercer was working today.”
I stopped breathing.
No one at the club knew my full name except payroll and management.
My badge only said Elena.
“What did he look like?” I asked.
The older man answered this time. “Late forties, maybe early fifties. Dark coat. Gray cap. Kept his face angled away from the camera.”
“Did he say why he wanted me?”
“No.”
Roman’s voice cut in. “He left when security approached.”
The room swayed slightly.
I reached for the arm of the couch to steady myself.
Roman noticed.
“Sit.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sit, Elena.”
There was no anger in his voice, but something in it made arguing feel pointless. I sat beside Lily.
The older man shut the door behind him and remained near it.
Roman looked at him. “Lock down the staff exits. Quietly. No panic. Pull every camera from the alley and neighboring businesses. I want a face before the hour is over.”
The man nodded. “Already started.”
“And Enzo?”
“Yes?”
“No one comes near this office without my permission.”
Enzo’s eyes moved to Lily again. Softer this time.
“Understood.”
He left, and the room felt smaller after him.
Roman walked to his desk but did not sit. He braced both hands on the polished surface and lowered his head.
For the first time, I saw not the boss everyone feared, but the brother beneath him.
The man who had spent seventeen months searching for a ghost.
I should have been afraid of him.
I was afraid of him.
But I was also afraid for him.
“Roman,” I said.
He lifted his head.
“If Caleb was your brother, and if Lily is…”
The word would not come out.
Roman’s eyes moved to my daughter.
“If she is his child,” he said quietly, “then she is my blood.”
Blood.
The word landed differently in his mouth.
Not like ownership.
Not like claim.
Like responsibility.
“I don’t know what Caleb told you,” I said. “I don’t know what he did before me. But he loved her.”
Roman’s face tightened.
“He knew?”
“Yes.”
“He knew you were pregnant before he disappeared?”
I nodded.
Roman looked away.
Something raw passed over his face so quickly I might have missed it if I had blinked.
Anger, maybe.
Grief.
Or a deeper hurt that had no clean name.
“He never told me,” he said.
“He told me he had no one to tell.”
Roman gave a humorless breath. “That was always Caleb’s gift. He could make loneliness sound noble.”
I wanted to defend him.
I wanted to say he had been gentle, that he had held me after my mother’s funeral though he had only known me three months, that he had left little notes under my coffee mug before early shifts, that he had once walked six blocks in the rain to bring me soup when I had the flu.
But every defense felt cracked now.
Because love and secrets could live in the same person.
Because Caleb could have been kind to me and still lied.
“Was he a bad man?” I asked.
Roman looked at me for a long time.
“No,” he said finally. “But he was reckless. And proud. And desperate to prove he was not me.”
I stared at him.
“He hated this life?”
“He hated that he was born near it.” Roman’s voice was low. “He hated our father’s name. Hated the rules. Hated how everyone looked at me and assumed he would follow.”
“Did you want him to?”
Roman’s answer took a moment.
“No.”
That surprised me.
“He thought I did,” Roman continued. “He thought I was trying to pull him in. I was trying to keep him out.”
Outside, a door closed somewhere down the hall. Lily shifted again. This time, her eyes opened.
For a second, she looked confused.
Then she saw me and reached out both arms.
“Mama.”
The tiny, sleepy word broke something in me.
I gathered her up immediately. She was warm and heavy against my chest. Her fingers grabbed at my collar, and she tucked her face against my neck as if nothing in the world had changed.
But everything had.
Roman watched her with an expression so careful it almost hurt to see.
Lily lifted her head after a moment, blinking at him.
She studied his face.
Then she smiled.
Not a big smile. Just that soft, uncertain smile babies give when they recognize safety before they understand it.
Roman went still.
Lily reached one hand toward him, opening and closing her fingers.
“Hi,” she whispered.
Roman’s throat moved.
He did not touch her.
He seemed afraid to.
“Hello, Lily,” he said.
She leaned forward slightly.
I tightened my hold, not out of fear, but because I suddenly felt like I was standing at the edge of a new life without knowing whether the floor would hold.
Roman noticed the movement and stepped back.
The old version of me would have apologized.
The woman I had become since Caleb left, the one who had worked double shifts and counted quarters for diapers and learned not to cry in grocery store aisles, did not.
“I need to know what’s happening,” I said. “Not half answers. Not things decided around me. She’s my daughter.”
Roman looked at me.
For a brief moment, I expected the coldness to return.
Instead, he nodded.
“You’re right.”
Those two words disarmed me more than any argument could have.
He gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk. “Sit with her. I’ll tell you what I can.”
I carried Lily to the chair, settling her on my lap. She was awake now, interested in the gold buttons on my blouse and entirely unaware that her life had just shifted onto dangerous ground.
Roman opened a drawer and took out a folder.
It was plain black, with no label on the front.
He set it on the desk but did not open it immediately.
“Caleb left home at nineteen,” he said. “He came back when he needed money or when he was in trouble, but he never stayed. About two years ago, he contacted me. Said he had information that could hurt someone named Victor Sloane.”
I recognized the name faintly.
Not from Caleb.
From whispers at the club.
Men lowered their voices around certain names. Victor Sloane was one of them.
Roman saw the recognition in my face.
“He owns pieces of the city most people never see,” he said. “Real estate, unions, contracts, businesses that look legitimate from the outside. Men like him don’t have fingerprints. Other people leave them.”
“What information?”
Roman opened the folder.
Inside were photographs, printouts, handwritten notes, and one image that made my heart stop.
Caleb.
Not the Caleb I remembered.
This Caleb wore a dark jacket and had shorter hair. His face looked thinner, his eyes more guarded. He stood outside a parking garage beside a woman I had never seen before. Her hair was tucked into a wool hat, and her hand rested on his arm like she was pleading with him.
Roman turned the photo slightly so I could see it better.
“This was taken four days before he vanished.”
“Who is she?”
“We don’t know.”
The answer sent a strange chill down my spine.
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve had men search for her for seventeen months.”
“And nothing?”
“Nothing useful.”
I stared at the woman’s face.
There was something familiar about her, but not enough to place. Maybe it was the angle of her cheek. Maybe the shape of her mouth. Or maybe I was looking for meaning because I needed the world to make sense.
Lily slapped one hand against the desk.
Roman glanced at her, then carefully moved the folder farther from her reach.
The small gesture nearly undid me.
“What happened after this photo?” I asked.
“Caleb called me. Said he’d made a mistake. Said he had taken something from Sloane, but he wouldn’t tell me what. He wanted to meet. I told him to come here.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“He never arrived.”
“And you think Sloane took him?”
“I think Caleb was running from someone. Sloane is the obvious answer. But obvious answers are often planted.”
The office door opened again after a soft knock.
Enzo stepped inside, holding a tablet.
Roman’s entire posture shifted.
“What?”
“We got a clearer image from the bakery across the alley.”
He placed the tablet on Roman’s desk and tapped the screen.
Roman looked down.
The change in him was immediate.
His face became unreadable, but the air seemed to sharpen.
“Turn it toward me,” I said.
Both men looked at me.
I held Lily closer.
“He asked for me by name,” I said. “I deserve to see.”
Roman hesitated only a second before turning the tablet.
The image was grainy but clear enough.
A man in a dark coat. Gray cap. His head was turned slightly, but the camera had caught the left side of his face.
I stared.
My first reaction was disappointment.
I did not know him.
Then something about his posture pulled at a memory.
A gas station. Late evening. Cold wind. Caleb standing beside the pump, arguing quietly with a man near a black sedan while I waited inside the car. When I asked who he was, Caleb had kissed my forehead and said, “Nobody important.”
I touched the screen without thinking.
“I’ve seen him.”
Roman leaned forward.
“When?”
“When I was pregnant. Maybe six or seven months along. Caleb saw him at a gas station and looked like he wanted to disappear.”
Roman’s eyes hardened.
“What did Caleb call him?”
I tried to remember.
The memory was dim, blurred by exhaustion and time.
Caleb’s hand on the steering wheel.
The man tapping the roof of our car.
My own swollen feet aching.
Then the name surfaced.
“Martin,” I said. “I think he called him Martin.”
Enzo exhaled quietly.
Roman looked at him.
“You know him?” I asked.
Roman’s answer came cold.
“Martin Vale. Caleb’s former sponsor.”
“Sponsor?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking. He helped Caleb find work when Caleb refused money from me. Introduced him to garages, side jobs, people outside our name.”
“That sounds generous.”
“It was calculated.”
I looked again at the image.
“Why would he be looking for me now?”
Roman’s eyes stayed on the tablet.
“That is the question.”
Lily began to fuss. The mood in the room had reached her, or maybe she was hungry. I reached for the diaper bag and pulled out a small container of crackers and her cup.
My hands shook so badly that I dropped the lid.
It rolled under Roman’s desk.
Before I could move, Roman crouched and picked it up.
He handed it back to me without a word.
Our fingers brushed.
His hand was warm.
Mine was ice.
“I can’t go back to my apartment tonight, can I?” I asked.
Roman did not insult me by pretending.
“No.”
My breath caught.
That little apartment had peeling paint near the bathroom window and a radiator that clanked like it was full of rocks. The kitchen light flickered when it rained. The lock stuck in winter.
But it was home.
It was where Lily learned to crawl. Where Caleb’s old flannel shirt still sat folded in the back of my closet because I had never found the courage to throw it away. Where I had taped a photo of my mother inside the cabinet beside the coffee mugs.
Leaving it felt like losing one more piece of myself.
“I don’t have anywhere else,” I said.
Roman looked at Enzo. “Prepare the north residence.”
Enzo blinked once.
“The north residence?”
Roman’s expression did not invite argument.
“Yes.”
Enzo nodded. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
“No,” I said quickly.
Both men looked at me.
I tightened my arms around Lily. “No. I’m not going to some secret mansion because you decided it.”
Roman studied me.
“It’s secure.”
“I don’t care how secure it is. You don’t get to move us around like furniture.”
A faint flicker crossed Enzo’s face.
Surprise, maybe.
Roman remained quiet.
I was shaking, but I kept going.
“I have spent almost two years making every decision alone. Every doctor appointment. Every bill. Every fever. Every night she cried and I didn’t know if I was doing anything right. I don’t know you. I don’t know your world. And I am not handing over control just because Caleb may have been your brother.”
Roman’s eyes did not leave mine.
For a moment, the silence stretched so thin I thought it might break.
Then he said, “Fair.”
One word.
No argument.
No anger.
Just fair.
It stole the force from me.
Roman walked around the desk and leaned against it, folding his arms.
“You choose,” he said. “A hotel under a name no one knows. My residence, where security is already in place. Or we have people secure your apartment and stay outside the building.”
“My neighbor is injured. There are families in that building.”
“That makes the third option harder.”
I hated that he was right.
Lily pressed a cracker into my mouth.
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny, but because life had become absurd. My daughter was feeding me crackers while a mafia boss offered housing options like a real estate agent with armed guards.
I kissed Lily’s fingers.
Roman looked away, but not before I saw the softness enter his face again.
“The hotel,” I said. “For tonight. Not your residence.”
He nodded immediately. “Done.”
That should have been the end of it.
But then Lily said, clear as a tiny bell, “Ca.”
My body went still.
Roman’s head turned slowly.
Lily reached toward the black folder on the desk.
“Ca,” she said again.
I stared at her.
She was fifteen months old. She knew a handful of words. Mama. Up. No. More. Ball. She sometimes babbled sounds that meant nothing.
But this was different.
It was the way she was looking at Caleb’s photograph.
Roman noticed too.
He opened the folder again and slid the photo closer, but not close enough for her to grab.
Lily leaned forward in my lap.
Her little face brightened.
“Da,” she whispered.
The room went silent.
My eyes burned so suddenly I had to look down.
“No,” I said, barely breathing. “No, baby.”
But Lily’s hand reached toward the photograph.
“Da.”
Roman stared at the image.
His voice, when it came, was rough.
“She recognizes him.”
I shook my head. “She can’t. She was three weeks old when he left.”
“Babies remember voices. Faces. Smells.”
“Not like that.”
Roman did not argue.
Lily began to fuss harder, frustrated that the picture remained out of reach. I turned her gently against my chest, rocking her.
“That’s enough,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
But my own heart was pounding.
Had she remembered him?
Or had she seen him after he supposedly disappeared?
The thought arrived quietly and then filled the entire room.
I looked up.
Roman had thought it too.
“When was the last time you saw Caleb?” he asked.
“The night he left.”
“Tell me exactly.”
I closed my eyes.
I had replayed that night so many times it no longer felt like memory. It felt like a room I could walk into unwillingly.
“He came home late,” I said. “Very late. Around two in the morning. His knuckles were scraped, but he said it was from work. He made tea even though I told him I didn’t want any. He kept touching things. The counter. The doorframe. My hair. Like he was trying to memorize the apartment.”
Roman’s face tightened.
“He asked about Lily. I was almost eight months pregnant then. He put his hand on my stomach and she kicked. He laughed.”
My voice broke.
I swallowed hard.
“Then he told me he needed to fix something. That he’d be back before breakfast.”
Roman lowered his gaze.
“He never came back.”
“No.”
“Did he leave anything behind?”
“Clothes. Tools. A jacket. Nothing important.”
“Nothing hidden?”
“I don’t know.” I frowned. “I searched everything after he left. At first I thought maybe there was a note.”
“And?”
“There wasn’t.”
Roman’s attention sharpened. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone else enter the apartment afterward?”
“Mrs. Alvarez. A maintenance man once. My friend Jess came by when I was too pregnant to move a bookshelf.”
Roman and Enzo exchanged a look.
“What?” I asked.
Roman straightened.
“Caleb would not have come home to say goodbye and left nothing.”
The words slipped under my skin.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying he may have left something you didn’t know how to find.”
I almost told him that was ridiculous.
Then I remembered Caleb kneeling by the kitchen sink one Saturday afternoon, replacing a loose board beneath the lower cabinets because he said mice might get in.
We never had mice.
I went cold.
Roman saw the change in my face.
“What did you remember?”
“The cabinet under the sink,” I said slowly. “He fixed it. Or said he fixed it. I never checked.”
Enzo was already reaching for his phone.
Roman raised one hand. “No. Not a crew.”
Enzo paused.
Roman looked at me. “Do you still have your keys?”
I nodded.
“We go now.”
My heart lurched. “To my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“You just said it wasn’t safe.”
“It isn’t. That’s why we go before whoever is watching you decides to go first.”
I held Lily tighter.
Roman glanced at her.
“She stays here with someone you choose from the staff, or she comes with us in a secured car.”
“She comes with me.”
The answer was immediate.
Roman nodded, as if he had expected nothing else.
Within ten minutes, everything changed around us.
My coat appeared from the staff room. Lily’s diaper bag was repacked by my trembling hands while Roman spoke quietly into his phone. Enzo brought a small knit hat for Lily from somewhere, dark blue with a tiny white pom-pom on top.
I looked at it, startled.
“My sister keeps things here for her son,” Enzo said gruffly. “He outgrew it.”
“Thank you.”
He shrugged as though gratitude made him uncomfortable.
We left through a hallway I had never seen before, past storage rooms and a narrow stairwell that smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and cold concrete. Roman walked ahead. Enzo followed behind. Another man opened doors before we reached them and closed them once we passed.
No one spoke.
Lily, bundled against my chest, seemed fascinated by the lights overhead.
The car waiting in the underground garage was black, quiet, and warm. Roman sat across from us rather than beside me. I appreciated that more than I wanted to admit.
As the car pulled out into the snowy afternoon, Chicago passed by in shades of gray and white.
For months after Caleb disappeared, I had imagined seeing him on these streets.
At bus stops.
In passing cars.
Outside corner stores.
Once, I followed a man for two blocks because he had Caleb’s walk. When he turned around, he was a stranger, and I cried so hard I had to sit on someone’s front steps until I could breathe.
Eventually I stopped looking.
It hurt less to believe he was gone than to keep searching for him in every crowd.
Now the searching had begun again, but with different questions.
Roman watched the city through the tinted glass.
“Tell me about him,” he said suddenly.
I looked at him.
“Caleb?”
He nodded once.
I did not know where to start.
“He was funny,” I said. “Not loudly. He didn’t perform for people. But he would say something under his breath and make me laugh when I was trying to stay mad.”
Roman’s mouth twitched, almost a smile.
“That sounds familiar.”
“He liked fixing things.”
“He liked taking them apart first.”
I smiled despite myself. “Yes.”
The car turned onto a narrower street.
“He hated olives,” I said.
Roman looked at me. “He used to eat them from the jar when he was twelve.”
“No, he did not.”
“He did.”
“He told me olives tasted like wet pennies.”
Roman’s eyes softened for a moment. “Then he changed.”
The words were simple, but the grief behind them was not.
I looked down at Lily, who had fallen asleep again against me.
“He wanted to name her Rose if she was a girl,” I said. “I said it was too old-fashioned. We compromised with Lily because he said it still sounded like something that bloomed.”
Roman’s face turned toward the window.
For a while, he said nothing.
When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.
“Our mother grew lilies in the backyard.”
I closed my eyes.
Of all the secrets Caleb had kept, that one hurt strangely.
He had not chosen the name from nowhere.
He had given our daughter a piece of a family he claimed not to have.
We reached my building fifteen minutes later.
It looked smaller with Roman beside it.
The brick front was stained by years of weather. Snow had been shoveled into uneven piles near the curb. Someone had tied a red scarf around the railing by the front steps after the metal grew too cold to touch with bare hands.
Mrs. Alvarez’s curtains were open on the second floor.
I hoped she was resting.
Roman must have noticed my glance.
“She won’t be disturbed,” he said.
Two men got out first and checked the entrance. Then Roman opened my door himself.
I stepped onto the sidewalk with Lily in my arms.
For the first time since meeting him, I saw Roman in daylight.
He looked less like a rumor and more like a man carrying too much history.
Inside, the building smelled like old wood, soup, and radiator heat. Familiar smells. Home smells.
My chest ached.
We climbed the stairs quietly. Roman stayed one step behind me, close enough to intervene, far enough not to crowd.
At my door, I fumbled with the keys.
“Take your time,” he said.
The kindness in his voice nearly broke me again.
I unlocked the door.
My apartment was exactly as I had left it that morning and somehow entirely different.
A mug in the sink. Lily’s yellow blanket on the chair. One tiny sock near the couch. Caleb’s old flannel folded at the end of the hallway shelf because I had taken it out two nights ago during a moment of weakness and then hated myself for needing it.
Roman’s gaze moved around the room without judgment.
That helped.
Enzo entered after him, checked the bedroom and bathroom, then returned with a nod.
“All clear.”
I carried Lily to her crib in the corner of my bedroom and laid her down. She stirred but did not wake. I stood over her for a moment longer than necessary.
When I returned to the kitchen, Roman was already crouched beneath the sink.
“I can do it,” I said.
He sat back on his heels and looked up.
So I knelt beside him.
The space under the sink held cleaning spray, trash bags, a half-empty box of sponges, and a plastic bucket. I took everything out, placing each item on the floor.
The back board looked normal.
Cheap wood. Slight discoloration from an old leak.
I pressed along the edges.
Nothing.
I felt ridiculous.
Roman remained silent.
I pressed harder.
Still nothing.
Then I remembered how Caleb used to open stubborn drawers. Not by pulling, but by lifting slightly first.
I pushed the panel up.
Something clicked.
The board shifted forward half an inch.
My breath stopped.
Roman reached past me, careful not to touch, and pulled the false panel free.
Behind it was a narrow space.
Inside sat a small metal box wrapped in a plastic grocery bag.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then I reached in and took it out.
It was heavier than I expected.
No lock.
Just tape around the edges.
My hands trembled.
Roman watched me. “You don’t have to open it here.”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
I peeled the tape away.
Inside were three things.
A flash drive.
A folded letter with my name written across the front in Caleb’s handwriting.
And a small silver baby bracelet.
I picked up the bracelet first.
It was delicate, tarnished with age. Not new. Not bought for Lily.
An engraving ran along the inside.
C.C.
Caleb Callahan.
Roman took one step back as if the little bracelet had struck him.
“That was his,” he said.
I looked up.
“Our mother kept it in her jewelry box,” he said. “After she died, I thought it was lost.”
His voice had gone very quiet.
“He had it all this time?”
Roman did not answer.
I unfolded the letter.
My name blurred immediately.
I blinked hard and forced myself to read.
Elena,
If you’re reading this, then I failed to come back when I promised.
I am sorry. Those words are too small for what I’ve done to you, but they are all I have. I wanted to tell you everything. I should have told you from the beginning. My name is Caleb Callahan. Price was my mother’s name, and I used it because I was a coward. Not because I didn’t love you.
I did love you.
I love you now, wherever this ends.
I found something I was never supposed to see. At first I thought I could use it to buy my way out of trouble. Then I realized it was bigger than me, bigger than Roman, bigger than all the names men whisper like prayers or curses in this city.
Roman is not who people say he is. He has done things I hated. He carries a name I ran from. But if you are in danger, go to him. He will protect you and the baby. He may not know how to say the right things, but he will stand between you and anything coming.
Do not trust Martin Vale.
Do not trust anyone who says they are helping because of me.
And Elena, if our child is born before I get back, tell them I wanted to be there. Tell them I was afraid, but not of being a father. Never that.
There is one more thing.
If the baby is a girl, and if you can forgive me this small request, I hope you name her Lily.
My breath broke.
I pressed the letter against my mouth to stop the sound coming out of me.
Roman stood completely still across the kitchen.
I could not look at him yet.
Not while the words were still rearranging the past.
He had lied.
He had left.
He had also tried, in whatever broken, desperate way he knew, to send me toward safety.
I lowered the letter and read the final lines.
The drive contains proof. But it is not the only copy.
The other copy is with the person Roman trusts most.
That is why I am not sure he is safe either.
I stared at the page.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes.
Roman’s face had gone pale beneath its controlled calm.
Enzo stepped forward from the doorway.
“What does it say?”
I handed the letter to Roman.
He read it once.
Then again.
His eyes stopped on the final lines.
“The person Roman trusts most,” I whispered.
The apartment became so quiet that I heard the radiator hiss.
Roman looked at Enzo.
Enzo looked back.
Neither man spoke.
Then, from the bedroom, Lily began to cry.
I turned instantly, but before I reached the hallway, something else sounded from inside the apartment.
A phone.
Not mine.
Not Roman’s.
Not Enzo’s.
A faint buzzing, low and steady, coming from the shelf where Caleb’s old flannel sat folded.
Roman crossed the room in three strides.
He lifted the shirt.
Beneath it, hidden in the loose lining, was a phone I had never seen before.
Its screen glowed with one incoming message.
No name.
Just a number.
Roman picked it up and read the words aloud.
His voice was barely above a whisper.
“She looks like him, Elena. Don’t let Roman take her.”
END OF PART 2 – LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT “”THE ENTIRE STORY”” IF YOU WANT TO READ THE FULL STORY
