Chapter 2
I cleared the terrace.
Guests moved inside.
Nobody complained.
My bodyguards stayed near the doors while Anwen sat beside the pool wrapped in a clean staff jacket.
Felice remained standing.
I preferred her uncomfortable.
“Start at the beginning.”
Anwen held the ruined envelope between both hands.
Our son’s name was Theo.
Eight months old.
She learned she was pregnant several weeks after leaving the coastal house.
At first, she intended to raise him alone.
Then complications after birth left her unable to work for nearly two months.
Savings disappeared.
She wrote me.
Not asking for marriage.
Not even asking for money.
Only telling me I had a son.
“What did the reply say?”
Anwen closed her eyes.
“That you remembered me kindly but did not want disruption in your life.”
My jaw tightened.
More.
“That you would send support if I never contacted you personally.”
I looked at Felice.
She stared toward the pool.
“And money came?”
“Yes.”
That stopped me.
I had not sent it.
“How much?”
“Enough for six weeks.”
Then nothing.
Anwen wrote again.
A second reply arrived.
This one harsher.
If she continued attempting contact, support would end permanently.
I asked:
“Who signed them?”
“Your office.”
Not my name.
Clever.
Official enough to frighten someone outside my inner circle.
Vague enough that nobody had to forge my signature.
Felice finally spoke.
“I was trying to protect you.”
I turned.
“From my son?”
“From a woman who appeared after one week together with a baby.”
Anwen’s face collapsed.
I stepped slightly between them.
Felice saw.
Hated it.
Good.
“How did you know about the first letter?”
Silence.
Then:
“It arrived at the estate.”
Of course.
By then Felice was spending several nights a week in my house and had begun helping organize social correspondence.
Not business.
Never business.
But she saw the envelope.
Recognized Anwen’s name because I had once mentioned the coastal week honestly when Felice and I began dating.
She opened it.
Read it.
Then made a decision for me.
“What happened to my son?”
I asked.
Anwen gripped the envelope harder.
Felice’s eyes changed.
That was the question she feared most.
Anwen whispered:
May you like
“She took him three days ago.”
Everything inside me went quiet.
