“Sir, do you need a maid? I’ll do any kind of work. My daughter hasn’t eaten.”
The desperate voice made me slow my steps outside my hotel on a cold November evening. Rain poured from the dark sky as a woman stood beneath the entrance awning, holding a sleeping toddler against her chest. As she slowly raised her head, my entire world stopped.
“Catherine?” I whispered.
Her eyes filled with tears. A fading bruise covered one side of her face, her hair was cut unevenly, and she looked years older than the woman I had lost two years ago.
“Please, Samuel, don’t react,” she whispered frantically. “Your mother has people watching every corner of this city.”
I stared at the sleeping child in her arms—a one-year-old girl named Penelope. Catherine had been pregnant when she vanished. The police had declared her dead after finding her burned car and matching dental records, yet here she was, standing alive in front of me.
I quietly led her up to my private penthouse suite. Once locked inside, Catherine placed our daughter in my arms. I dropped to my knees, staring at the little girl whose existence had been kept from me.
“My mother buried an empty coffin,” I said.
Catherine lowered her eyes and revealed the chilling truth: my mother, Daria, had arranged for her to be abducted the night of a charity gala, keeping her imprisoned at a secluded estate while bribing Dr. Weston to forge dental records on a burned body.
“When she discovered I was pregnant, everything became worse,” Catherine wept. “Your father rewrote his estate plan before he died—if anything happened to you, your wife would inherit control of Kincaid Enterprises. Your mother believed I was standing between her and everything she wanted.”
Moments later, my phone rang. It was my mother calling about an upcoming board dinner.
I answered calmly, then pulled out a secure satellite phone to text my private investigator, Mara Chen: SHE IS ALIVE. BEGIN PHASE TWO.
Looking into Catherine’s eyes, I took her hand and promised: “Tonight, my mother finally learns what it costs to bury a living woman…”
