Chapter 2 - THE PENTHOUSE SUMMONS

The drive back to Queens was a blur of rain, windshield wipers, and the sound of my own suppressed sobbing. The girls were unusually quiet in the backseat, sensing the gravity of the situation. Maria had fallen asleep clutching her velvet dress, while Betty stared out the window at the passing city skyline, her small brow furrowed in deep thought.

"Mommy?" Betty asked softly as we crossed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. "Are we running away again?"

The question broke my heart into a thousand pieces. I looked at her through the rearview mirror. "I'm keeping us safe, baby. That's my job."

"But I liked Daniel," Betty whispered. "He looked at us nice. Not like the angry lady."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I know, sweetie. I liked him too."

We arrived at our small, cramped apartment at 2:00 PM. It felt completely alien after the expansive luxury of the Grand Sterling Estate. The leaky faucet was still dripping. The pile of unopened mail was still sitting on the counter. The pink cereal bowls were still in the dish rack. It was safe. It was ordinary. And it suddenly felt like a prison.

I immediately pulled out three massive suitcases and threw them onto my bed. I didn't know where we were going. Maybe my sister's place in Chicago. Maybe upstate. I just knew we couldn't be here when the media storm hit. Once the paparazzi figured out why the billionaire left his bride at the altar, they would hunt us down like sport.

I was frantically throwing sweaters and jeans into a bag when my cell phone buzzed on the nightstand.

I ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.

I finally snatched it up, ready to turn it off, but I saw the caller ID. It wasn't a blocked number. It wasn't the estate. It was Mrs. Higgins, my elderly neighbor.

Frowning, I answered. "Hello?"

"Rachel, dear," Mrs. Higgins' voice came through, trembling with a mixture of excitement and utter terror. "You might want to look out your front window. There is... a situation on the street."

I dropped the sweater I was holding. My heart slammed against my ribs. I ran out of the bedroom, past the girls who were sitting on the couch watching cartoons, and peered through the blinds of my third-floor living room window.

My breath caught in my throat.

The narrow, pothole-riddled street of my Queens neighborhood was completely blocked off. Three massive black Cadillac Escalades were parked diagonally across the lanes, stopping traffic in both directions. Men in dark suits and earpieces were standing by the vehicles, looking entirely out of place next to the bodegas and laundromats.

And standing in the dead center of the street, getting absolutely drenched in the freezing October rain, was Daniel.

He was still wearing his wedding tuxedo. He hadn't even bothered to grab a coat or an umbrella. The rain was plastering his dark hair to his forehead, ruining the expensive silk of his suit. He was looking up, his piercing blue eyes scanning the windows of my building until they locked onto mine through the blinds.

My phone buzzed again in my hand. It was him.

I slowly brought the phone to my ear, my hand shaking violently. "Daniel... what are you doing?"

"I'm not letting you go, Rachel," his voice came through the speaker, rough, breathless, and completely desperate. "Not this time. Not ever again."

"Daniel, you have to leave," I pleaded, pressing my forehead against the cold glass of the window. I could see neighbors starting to step out onto their fire escapes, filming the scene with their cell phones. "The press will find you. You're causing a scene. You need to go back to your tower and fix your company."

"To hell with the company!" he shouted into the phone, and I could hear his voice echoing up from the street below. "I just walked away from a multi-billion dollar merger! I left a woman at the altar in front of half the politicians in the state! I am a dead man in the corporate world, Rachel. And I do not care!"

I closed my eyes, tears streaming down my face. "Daniel, please..."

"I spent eight years building an empire, and it was nothing but an empty, cold glass tower without you," Daniel begged, his voice breaking. He dropped to his knees right there in the middle of the wet, dirty street. A billionaire on his knees in Queens. "I don't care about the money. I don't care about the board. I don't care if we have to live in a one-bedroom apartment for the rest of our lives. You and those girls are my empire. You are everything."

"Mommy?"

I turned. Betty and Maria were standing behind me, looking out the window at the man kneeling in the rain.

"Is the prince crying?" Maria asked softly, her bottom lip trembling.

Betty looked at me, her young eyes holding an ancient, profound wisdom. "Mommy, you said we only run away from bad things. Daniel isn't a bad thing. He's our dad, isn't he?"

The truth, raw and undeniable, hit me with the force of a freight train. I had been running from fear, not from Daniel. I was so afraid of not being enough, so afraid of the world he lived in, that I had denied him the chance to prove he was a better man than I gave him credit for. And here he was, throwing away his entire universe just for the chance to stand in the rain outside my window.