The Gulfstream left Singapore at one in the morning, and Ethan spent the first three hours of the flight staring at his phone with Chloe's name on the screen, trying to decide whether to call her.He knew what he should tell her. He should tell her that the woman who saved Germany had also written the report that let armed men walk into their home, and that he was flying to Frankfurt to get that same woman out of a cell. Chloe deserved to hear that from him before she heard it from a news anchor.But she had just carried their son down six flights of stairs with a gunman behind her, and she was finally asleep in a house full of Volkov's men. If he called her now, she would spend the whole night awake and alone with that knowledge, and there would be nothing he could do to hold her.He put the phone face down on the table and promised himself he would tell her in person.Across the cabin, Vance watched him with tired gray eyes."You're going to tell her, Boss," Vance said. It wasn't a

Chloe landed in Frankfurt a little after six in the evening, and she went straight from the plane to the holding facility without stopping to change.She had left Alexander with Volkov's people on Long Island, with two nannies, a pediatric nurse, and eleven armed men, and it had still taken every ounce of strength she had to walk out that door. She had spent the whole flight replaying the news report in her head. The penthouse systems were designed by Seraphina Laurent, Ethan's former assistant, who had sold the plans to the men behind the attack. The anchor had said it so calmly, as if it were a weather update.Ethan had known. Marcus had admitted that much on the phone. Ethan had known since last night, and he hadn't said a word.She stepped out of the car into a cold drizzle. She was wearing the same black jeans and cream sweater she'd thrown on at dawn, with a camel coat over the top, and she knew she looked like a woman who hadn't slept. The jeans clung to the full hips and soft

"I know her," Ethan said again, and Chloe felt the words land somewhere under her ribs and stay there.She pressed her free hand flat against the cool leather of the seat, because she needed to hold onto something solid. Outside the cabin window, there was nothing but black sky and the blinking light on the end of the wing."Did you sleep with her?" she asked."No.""Did you pay her two hundred thousand dollars?"The pause was shorter this time, but it was there. "Yes."Chloe closed her eyes. "Is that little boy yours, Ethan?""No," he said, and his voice was firm and clear and absolutely certain. "Chloe, I swear to you on Alexander's life, Noah is not my son."She wanted to believe him so badly that it hurt. She could hear the truth in his voice, or at least she thought she could, but she'd thought she could hear the truth last night too, when he'd paused for half a second before saying Seraphina's name."Then tell me why," she said. "Why would you pay a woman in Miami two hundred th

Chloe looked at the envelope for a long time without touching it.Her grandfather waited across the table, his hands folded on the white cloth, the way he used to wait when she was a little girl trying to decide whether to confess to breaking something. Through the tall windows behind him, the October sun lay across the frosted lawn, and somewhere upstairs a nanny was humming to Alexander."I'm not signing anything today," Chloe said finally."I didn't expect you to." Henry Caldwell nodded, as if she'd passed a test. "The offer stands until the board vote. Take the papers. Read them when you're ready."She picked up the envelope and held it against her chest, and she hated how light it felt for something that could end her marriage.---In Frankfurt, Ethan saw the photograph at six in the morning, when Marcus sent it to him and a single word: Fuck.He called Chloe fourteen times. On the fifteenth, she picked up, but she didn't say anything. He could hear her breathing, and he could he

The fire trucks were still pouring water on what was left of St. Mary's when Vance drove Chloe and Natalia back through the gates of the Caldwell estate at a quarter past one in the morning.Natalia hadn't stopped shaking since the chapel. She sat in the back seat wrapped in Vance's coat, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her eyes fixed on nothing, whispering her son's name every few minutes as though saying it might bring him back. Chloe sat beside her and held her hand the whole way, and neither of them said much, because there was nothing either of them could say that would make it better.The lights were still on in the study.Chloe walked straight through the front door, past the startled housekeeper, and down the hallway without taking off her coat. It still smelled of smoke. Her hair smelled of smoke. When she pushed the study door open, her grandfather looked up from his chair by the fire, and the relief that flooded his face would have been touching if she hadn't know