Chapter 2 - THE GHOSTS IN THE REARVIEW
The drive from The Grand Oak to our apartment felt agonizingly long. The neon lights of the Chicago skyline blurred past the windows, casting long, shifting shadows across the backseat where my children sat. The silence in the car was heavy, thick with the unasked questions floating in the space between us. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white, my eyes darting to the rearview mirror every few seconds. Sophie was no longer crying, but she was leaning heavily against Ethan, her thumb resting near her mouth—a self-soothing habit she only fell back into when she was deeply anxious. Lucas was staring out the window, his small brow furrowed in a way that painfully mirrored the man we had just left behind in the restaurant.
"Mommy?" Ethan's voice was small, cutting through the hum of the engine and the rhythmic thumping of the tires over the asphalt. "Who was that man? Why did he look like me?"
I took a deep, steadying breath. This was the moment I had dreaded for five years. I had rehearsed it a thousand times in my head, yet now, with the reality staring me in the face, every prepared script vanished into thin air. "He's someone Mommy used to know a long time ago, baby," I said, forcing my voice to remain calm, steady, reassuring. "Before you three were even born."
"He was mean," Sophie whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "He made you upset. And the lady with the shiny ring was mean too. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. You told us to never trust smiles that don't reach the eyes."
I couldn't help but let out a dry, humorless chuckle. My brilliant, observant girl. "You're right, bug. Her smile wasn't kind. But you don't need to worry about them. I'm right here. I've always got you."
When we finally pulled into the underground parking garage of our building, I felt a fraction of the tension leave my shoulders. This was our sanctuary. A modest three-bedroom apartment that I had paid for with the sweat, tears, and flour of Little Harvest Kitchen. It wasn't a sprawling estate with marble floors and security details, but it was warm, it was safe, and it was ours.
After wrestling them through their nighttime routines—bath time, pajamas, brushing teeth, and reading three consecutive chapters of a fantasy book to keep their minds off the restaurant—I finally closed their bedroom door. The moment the latch clicked into place, my knees buckled. I slid down the wooden frame of the door, burying my face in my hands.
The dam broke.
Five years of suppressed grief, anger, and betrayal washed over me in a suffocating wave. I remembered the sterile white walls of the hospital room. The agonizing pain of a high-risk delivery, wondering if my babies would survive the night. I remembered reaching for my phone, fingers clumsy and shaking, dialing Sebastian's number over and over again, praying he would pick up.
“Sebastian, please... they’re here. They’re early, but they’re here. I need you.”
Nothing but voicemail.
I remembered his mother, Eleanor Carter, sweeping into my room enveloped in the scent of expensive Chanel perfume and cold indifference. She had a lawyer trailing behind her like an obedient dog. I remembered the paperwork she shoved into my face, the cruel words she spat at me while I was bleeding and broken. “You’ve lost the pregnancy, Hannah. It’s a tragedy, of course, but let’s be realistic. You were never meant for our world. Sign this NDA. Take the severance package. Leave my son alone.”
She had lied. She told Sebastian I had miscarried. And Olivia... Olivia had made sure Sebastian never saw my frantic messages.
I pushed myself up from the floor, my sadness morphing into a cold, hard rage. I walked into my bedroom, opened the small digital safe tucked in the back of my closet, and pulled out a small, silver USB drive.
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It contained a single audio file. A recording from the hospital's internal phone system, obtained by a sympathetic nurse who had realized what the Carter family was doing to me. She had secretly recorded the conversation Olivia had at the nurses' station when she commandeered my belongings and my phone.
I plugged the drive into my laptop. I didn't need to play it; I had memorized every word. But I needed to know it was there. My armor. My weapon. Sebastian Carter thought he could waltz back into my life and demand answers? He was about to get them. And it was going to destroy everything he thought he knew.
