Too Late To Claim His Hidden Heir

Roark didn't turn around.

"Tell him I'll call back, Odile."

"He said now." The woman stepped into the orange light. Sharp bob, sharper suit, phone held out like a summons. Her eyes slid over me, cool and measuring. "He was very clear."

"So am I."

His grip loosened for one second. Just one.

I took it.

I twisted my wrist free and crossed the gravel to the idling sedan. Tobin had the back door open before I reached it, his face pale in the dome light.

"Get in, get in, get in," he hissed.

I slid onto the leather. The door thumped shut. Tobin scrambled around to the front passenger seat.

"Hollis," I said to the driver. "Home."

"Yes, ma'am."

The engine purred. The car rolled forward two feet.

Then a palm slammed flat against the window frame, and Hollis hit the brakes so hard my seatbelt bit into my collarbone.

Roark had his hand hooked over the top of my door, fingers curled around the edge of the glass. He was bent low, face level with mine. If Hollis moved, he'd drag him across the lot.

"Jesus," Tobin breathed. "Is he insane?"

"Ma'am?" Hollis's eyes found mine in the rearview mirror. "Want me to call security?"

"No."

I pressed the button. The window slid down halfway and stopped against his knuckles.

Cold air rushed in. So did the smell of him. Cedar and rain. Three years, and he still wore the same thing.

My chest tightened. I ignored it.

"Take your hand off my car, Roark."

"Five minutes."

"You've had more than five minutes tonight."

"Then give me two." His voice came fast now, words tumbling over each other like he was afraid I'd vanish mid-sentence. "I looked for you. Every single month. Zurich, London, Vienna. I flew to Prague because someone swore they saw you at a bank there. It wasn't you. I stood in that lobby for an hour anyway."

I studied my hands in my lap. Steady. Good.

"That sounds expensive."

"I didn't care what it cost."

"You cared once." I glanced up. "You cared a lot. About cost."

His knuckles went white on the glass.

"My father," he said. "He had the board in his pocket. He had my mother's trust. He had *you*, Mairenn. Your visa, your job at the firm, your name. He told me one call, and you'd never work in this country again. He had the paperwork drafted. I saw it."

Tobin twisted around in his seat, eyes huge.

I didn't blink.

"So you protected me," I said. "By breaking my heart in a car in the rain."

"I thought—" He shut his eyes. Opened them. "I thought if I made you hate me, you'd leave clean. You'd be safe. And I'd fix it. I'd take the company out from under him, and then I'd come find you, and I'd explain."

"And did you? Take the company?"

"Eighteen months ago."

"Congratulations."

"Mairenn." He leaned closer, forehead almost touching the glass. "I was wrong. I know I was wrong. I've known it every day since. I was a coward, and I let him decide for both of us, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please. Just let me make it right. One chance. That's all I'm asking."

His voice broke on *chance*.

The old Roark never begged. The old Roark gave orders and watched the world rearrange itself.

I waited to feel something.

There had been a version of me who would have climbed out of this car for those words. She'd have pressed her face against his chest and cried into his shirt and forgiven him before he finished the sentence.

I'd buried her in Lisbon.

Somewhere between the cracked suitcase and the clinic with peeling green paint. Somewhere between the third night I couldn't sleep and the morning I finally stopped checking my phone for his name.

What was left inside me now was very quiet. Flat and gray, like a field after a fire.

"You want to make it right," I said.

"Yes."

"How?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

"That's what I thought." I smoothed a crease from my skirt. "You don't get to fix this, Roark. It isn't broken. It's gone."

"Don't say that."

"Your father didn't throw me out. You did. You looked me in the eye and did it. Whatever reasons you had, I was the one standing in the rain."

"I know."

"No. You don't." I held his gaze. "And that's fine. You don't need to."

Behind him, Odile's heels crunched closer on the gravel. "Roark. He's still holding."

He didn't move. A muscle ticked under the scar in his eyebrow.

"I'm not walking away from this," he said quietly.

"You already did. Three years ago."

"Then I'm walking back."

I almost smiled. Almost.

"It's over, Roark."

I said it gently. That was the part that seemed to hurt him most. Not anger. Not tears. Just calm, like reading a weather report.

His fingers slipped an inch on the glass.

I looked at the rearview mirror. "Hollis."

"Ma'am."

"Drive."

Hollis didn't hesitate. The sedan lurched forward. Roark's hand peeled away from the frame, and he stumbled back a step.

I didn't close the window right away. I don't know why.

Maybe I wanted to see it.

He stood alone under the parking lot light, tie crooked, shoulders heaving. Odile hovered behind him with the phone still held out. He didn't take it.

He pulled out his own instead.

The car slowed for the speed bump at the lot exit, and his voice carried across the empty gravel, low and hard and perfectly clear.

"Desmond. It's me."

A pause.

"I don't care what time it is. Mairenn Sauvage. She landed three days ago. I want every flight, every hotel, every meeting, every name she's spoken to since. Who she calls. Who she sees. Where she sleeps."

Tobin made a small strangled sound in the front seat.

"Everything," Roark said. "By morning."

Hollis cleared the bump. I pressed the button, and the window sealed shut with a soft hiss.

Silence filled the car.

"Okay," Tobin said finally. His voice was thin. "So that's a little bit terrifying."

I didn't answer.

I was staring at my phone. At the lock screen I'd changed before the plane landed, swapping the photo for a plain black square. Just in case.

Every flight. Every name.

Every *address*.

"Tobin," I said quietly. "The house on Larkspur. The one the realtor set up for us."

"Yeah?"

"Who else knows about it?"

He turned around slowly. Whatever he saw on my face made him stop smiling.

"Mairenn," he said. "What exactly is he going to find?"