Chapter 1 - Four Faces I Knew
At 4:18 that afternoon, I canceled my engagement.
By 4:19, my mother had called three times.
By 4:22, Serena had sent one message.
Are you serious?
I didn’t answer either of them.
I was sitting behind the wheel of my SUV outside a restaurant on West Fifty-Sixth Street, watching four six-year-old boys climb into the back with the woman I had spent six years trying to forget.
Elena Marquez.
The woman my mother told me had left New York voluntarily.
The woman who supposedly took the seventy-five-thousand-dollar check my family offered her and disappeared without saying goodbye.
The woman standing beside me now with two worn duffel bags and a face that said she had spent those same six years surviving something very different.
“You can still change your mind,” Elena said.
“About the apartment?”
“About involving yourself.”
I looked through the windshield.
“Four children with my face just introduced themselves to me in a restaurant bathroom.”
“That doesn’t make you their father.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t make you entitled to answers tonight.”
“No.”
That surprised her.
Six years ago I would have demanded them.
I had been twenty-nine then, heir to Mercer Development, accustomed to contracts, schedules, and people saying yes before I finished asking.
Elena had been the first person who didn’t.
Maybe that was why I loved her.
Maybe that was why my mother hated her.
“I told you,” I said. “No questions tonight. They need somewhere warm.”
Leo was already asleep against Liam’s shoulder.
Luke was staring at the illuminated skyscrapers.
Logan had discovered the rear climate controls and was pressing every button.
Elena watched them.
Her defenses softened only when she looked at her sons.
Our sons?
I forced myself not to use that word.
Not yet.
The Tribeca apartment had been empty for months. I used it occasionally when late meetings made the drive home pointless. It had three bedrooms, groceries delivered weekly, building security, and more space than Elena and the boys clearly had possessed recently.
When we arrived, she stopped in the foyer.
“This is temporary.”
“Yes.”
“One night.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“You won’t call lawyers?”
“Not tonight.”
Her face changed.
“You already have lawyers.”
“I was supposed to announce an engagement to Serena Vance in three hours. Of course I have lawyers.”
“Serena Vance?”
“You know her?”
Elena laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Of course.”
That bothered me.
“How?”
“No questions tonight, remember?”
Fair.
The boys attacked the pantry like they had not eaten properly all day.
I ordered food.
Pizza.
Chicken.
Pasta.
Too much.
Elena watched me set boxes across the dining table.
“You always overcorrect when you’re guilty.”
“I’m not guilty yet. I’m confused.”
“You’re a Mercer. Confusion looks like guilt from a distance.”
Leo looked between us.
“Do you know Mom?”
I sat carefully.
“Yes.”
“How?”
Elena answered before I could.
“A long time ago.”
Liam asked:
“Were you friends?”
I looked at her.
“Very good friends.”
That was technically true.
Luke pointed at my cuff links.
“Mom has those.”
The room stopped.
“What?”
Elena’s face drained.
Luke continued innocently.
“Not the same ones. The old silver ones in the little box.”
My grandfather’s cuff links were custom-made in 1964.
Mercer family crest inside.
Only four pairs ever existed.
Mine.
My father’s.
My grandfather’s.
And the pair my father gave me before he died.
That last pair vanished six years ago.
The same week Elena disappeared.
I looked at her.
“Where did you get them?”
She stood.
“Boys, showers.”
“Mom—”
“Now.”
They obeyed reluctantly.
When bedroom door closed, Elena turned on me.
“I didn’t steal them.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Your mother did.”
My pulse shifted.
“She accused you?”
“She accused me of stealing them, stealing money, and trying to trap you with a pregnancy.”
I stopped breathing.
“She knew you were pregnant?”
Elena stared at me.
“Your mother knew before you did.”
The apartment suddenly felt too small.
“What happened?”
Elena looked toward boys’ room.
Then back at me.
“Your mother told me you didn’t want them.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because five minutes ago you canceled your engagement before you even knew whether they were yours.”
I stepped closer.
“Elena, what did she show you?”
“A letter.”
“From me?”
“Yes.”
“I never wrote it.”
“I know.”
“How?”
She reached into her duffel bag.
Pulled out an old envelope.
My name typed across front.
Inside was a six-year-old letter on Mercer stationery.
Elena,
Whatever exists between us ends here. I will not allow a pregnancy to interfere with my obligations. My family will provide reasonable assistance if you agree to leave New York and make no future claim against me.
At the bottom was my signature.
Perfect.
Except I knew exactly where I had been that day.
London.
Sitting beside my dying father.
And beneath my forged signature was a handwritten notation from my mother.
Handled.
I looked at Elena.
“She gave you this?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“A cashier’s check.”
“You took it?”
“No.”
She reached into the envelope again.
The original check was still there.
Uncashed.
Seventy-five thousand dollars.
I stared at it.
Six years of believing she sold me for money.
Six years of anger.
Six years of my mother saying:
“You finally saw what she was.”
Then I saw another paper inside the envelope.
A hospital ultrasound.
Four fetal sacs.
Date:
six years and seven months earlier.
My name was printed under alleged father.
Elena whispered:
“I came to your office three times.”
“I was in London.”
“I know.”
“Who stopped you?”
She looked me directly in eye.
“Serena Vance.”
May you like
My almost-fiancée.
Cliffhanger: The woman I was supposed to marry that night had known about Elena’s pregnancy six years earlier.
