Chapter 2 - THE NEWS HE DIDN'T DESERVE
Leo Tomlin had imagined Natasha returning in a hundred different ways. In some versions she walked through his study door angry enough to break something. In others she called because she'd found the money he'd placed in the account after all. Sometimes, in the hours before dawn, he dreamed she was still there, asleep with one bare foot outside the blankets, and woke reaching across an empty bed.
He had never imagined learning about his child from a photograph placed on a conference table.
Victor arrived at seven in the morning with a cheerful greeting and a leather portfolio. Leo was reviewing a proposal for the South Harbor development, an ambitious collection of warehouses and legitimate shipping contracts that Carlo had wanted to pass into the next generation without the criminal operations attached.
"There's a personal complication," Victor said.
Leo did not look up. "Your personal complications can wait."
"I don't think this one can."
Victor slid a photograph across the table. Natasha stood outside a brick medical building, one hand braced at the small of her back. Beneath her blue coat was an unmistakable curve.
Leo stopped breathing for a moment. He had seen her thinner, sadder, angrier, wearing silk at galas and an old T-shirt in their kitchen. He had never seen her like this.
"When?" he asked.
"Taken last week."
"Where?"
"Wisconsin."
Leo studied the photograph. Something hot and helpless moved through him. He counted backward, remembered Natasha's nausea on their last morning, remembered the untouched toast, and felt the blood drain from his face.
"How far along?"
Victor spread his hands. "Apparently far enough to keep a fairly important secret."
Leo lifted his eyes. "How did you obtain this?"
Victor's smile held. "I have friends."
"Names."
"Don't be dramatic. The family should know whether there's a Tomlin heir out there."
Leo stood. It was a small movement, but Victor took a step away from the table.
"You sent someone to follow Natasha?"
"I checked a rumor."
"You had no right."
Victor laughed once. "You gave up that right when you dismissed her without settling the family situation. You cannot run this organization on sentiment, cousin."
Leo's temper had been a weapon for years. It was not the kind that exploded loudly. He used it to become precise. He turned toward the door and told his head of security to collect every report Victor's staff had produced about Natasha and to preserve the original sources. He ordered that nobody connected to the Tomlin organization approach her.
Victor's expression tightened. "You're overreacting."
"You are finished speaking about her."
"And the baby?"
Leo looked down at the photograph again. The child existed whether or not he had earned the privilege of knowing her. His greatest mistake had been believing that love became less dangerous when it was kept outside his life.
"Especially the baby," he said.
After Victor left, Leo sat alone and remembered the night he dismissed Natasha. He had intended to be cruel enough that she would not try to return. That was the explanation he repeated to himself, because it permitted him to treat his decision as a sacrifice rather than cowardice.
Carlo's funeral had brought armed men to the estate, three anonymous threats to Leo's phone, and a photograph of Natasha entering a grocery store. Victor said enemies would use her if they knew she mattered. Leo believed him. He chose to remove her before they could reach her. Then he had watched her walk out carrying her old blue bag, and the damage had become permanent.
He had told himself she would take the money. She hadn't. He told himself she would call. She didn't. He told himself it meant she was safe. Apparently Victor's people had been looking at her all along.
Leo called Donovan.
"Did you know?" he asked.
Donovan was quiet before answering. "I knew she didn't get on the plane. That's all."
"You knew where she went."
"I took her to Union Station. She asked me not to tell you more than that."
Leo stared at the skyline. He had paid Donovan a great deal to be loyal. For the first time, Leo understood that Donovan might have done something honorable by keeping a promise to somebody who could not pay him at all.
"You did right," he said.
Donovan exhaled. "Sir?"
"You did right."
An hour later Leo called an independent lawyer, not the one who handled Tomlin business. He asked what legal responsibilities he might have to a child whose mother he had expelled from their home, and how to fulfill those responsibilities without overriding her choices. The lawyer explained paternity, financial support, privacy, and the fact that an unborn child was not an asset to secure through force of personality. Leo disliked hearing obvious truths from a stranger. He needed to hear them anyway.
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, Natasha met Naomi Brooks in a modest office above a pharmacy. Naomi was forty-eight, wore flat shoes, and asked practical questions before she offered sympathy. She photographed the envelope, made a record of when it was found, and suggested filing a police report and requesting preservation of available security footage.
"Do you believe Mr. Tomlin sent it?" Naomi asked.
Natasha considered the question carefully. "I believe he has people who think terrifying me would please him."
"That's not the same as believing he ordered it."
"No. But I'm not interested in being wrong at my daughter's expense."
Naomi nodded. "Then we proceed based on evidence, not assumptions."
That afternoon Natasha told Dr. Shah about the photograph and the threat. The clinic's manager began reviewing access logs and offered to coordinate with its privacy officer. It was uncomfortable and invasive, this act of explaining her fear to strangers, but Natasha was starting to recognize that asking for help was not a failure of independence.
Leo arrived in Milwaukee two days later. He didn't arrive at the bookstore with a fleet of vehicles. He came alone to Naomi's office at an appointed hour after his attorney contacted hers. Natasha had agreed to fifteen minutes, with Naomi present, because she wanted answers about Victor. She wore a loose navy dress that did nothing to hide her pregnancy.
When Leo entered, his attention fell toward her stomach and then rose quickly to her face. He looked like someone had struck him, but he stayed where he was.
"Natasha."
"Leo."
He swallowed. "Are you well?"
"I'm getting medical care. That's what you need to know."
He nodded. His hands were empty. No flowers, no jewelry, no gifts disguised as apologies.
"Victor has been investigating you," he said. "I didn't authorize it. I found out on Tuesday."
Naomi asked, "What material did he show you?"
Leo described the photograph and offered to provide the image and the information in his possession to the appropriate authorities. Natasha watched him carefully. His willingness to answer Naomi rather than insist that she leave the room was unfamiliar enough to feel almost surreal.
"Why did you send me away?" Natasha asked.
The question landed harder than he expected. He looked at the floor, then at her.
"After Carlo died, I got threats. Victor showed me a photograph of you outside a market. He said someone had identified you as leverage. I panicked and called it strategy."
"You could have told me."
"Yes."
"You could have asked what I wanted."
"Yes."
"Instead you threw me out and made me feel like a paid inconvenience."
His face twisted. "I know."
"No," she said quietly. "You know what you meant. You don't know what it did."
He accepted that without defending himself. Then he looked toward her stomach again. The hunger in his face frightened her because it was sincere, and sincerity had once persuaded her to forgive more than she should.
"Is the baby mine?" he asked.
Natasha took a long breath. "Yes. She's yours."
His eyes filled instantly. He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead and sat because he seemed unable to remain standing.
"A girl," he whispered.
"Yes."
"Does she—" He stopped and tried again. "Is she healthy?"
"So far, yes."
Leo nodded so many times Natasha nearly asked him to stop. Instead, she felt the baby shift beneath her ribs. For a moment she remembered the crib she had imagined in his penthouse and grieved the life she thought they'd been going to have.
"I won't take her from you," he said. "I won't try to take either of you anywhere."
"Promises don't restore trust."
"I understand."
"Then please understand something else. There will be no guards outside my apartment, no drivers watching my work, and no one calling my doctor. If you want to help, do it through Naomi."
"All right."
Natasha rose. Their fifteen minutes had become thirty. Leo stood but made no attempt to touch her.
At the door, he said, "I am sorry. Not because there's a baby. Because I treated you as though you couldn't choose for yourself."
Natasha wanted to believe him. More dangerously, she wanted to go back three years and hear those words before they were necessary.
She left without replying.
That night Leo returned to his Chicago office. Inside his private mail was an envelope with no address, delivered by hand. A photograph of Natasha leaving Naomi's building had been printed on glossy paper. Across its bottom, someone had typed a sentence.
A LIFE FOR A LIFE. ASK WHAT CARLO REALLY LEFT YOU.
Leo looked at the picture until the office seemed to shrink around him. Victor had claimed the photographs were merely precautionary. This photograph had been taken hours after Leo ordered the surveillance stopped.
May you like
Someone was still watching.
And that someone knew exactly how much he now had to lose.
