Chapter 2

That birthmark kept me awake all night.

Vivian assumed I was too excited about the baby to sleep. She got up several times to check on me and tucked the blanket around my shoulders.

The way she looked at me was complicated, filled with grief and fear.

The next morning, the moment Vivian left for the university, I sprang out of bed.

I rushed into the nursery.

The baby was still asleep.

With trembling hands, I pulled several strands of hair from his head and wrapped them in a tissue.

When I finished, I looked up at our wedding portrait.

Vivian looked elegant and intelligent in the photograph, her gaze full of devotion.

Who could have imagined such calculation beneath that beautiful face?

Vivian, if this truly was your secret child, I would make sure you answered for it.

I delivered the samples to AlderGen Diagnostics and paid for expedited testing, but the earliest result would still come that afternoon.

Back at home, I sat staring at Vivian's computer.

She was careful. Her phone never left her side, and the computer required a password.

But I knew the password to her private notes.

It was our wedding anniversary and my birthday.

I had never opened them before because I trusted her.

Now that trust was like paper torn through the center. It couldn't be put back together.

I took a deep breath and opened the notes.

I expected intimate messages with another man or records of hidden payments.

Instead, the screen displayed a series of strange numbers and dates.

I frowned. Vivian taught theoretical physics. Were these research calculations?

But the farther I scrolled, the colder I became.

The newest entries had been written during the past few days.

"He can't hold on much longer. His vital signs are collapsing."

"The transfer must be completed before the designated moment. The child is the only key."

"Aaron will accept this gift. As long as the child remains beside him, he will survive."

My hands began shaking, and I nearly lost my grip on the mouse.

Who was he?

The lover who had supposedly died?

Why did Vivian describe his death as a transfer?

And what did she mean when she wrote that Aaron would accept the gift?

What did she think I was?

She had delivered another man's baby to me like a present and claimed it would keep me alive?

The logic was so absurd that I almost laughed.

I continued scrolling and found an address at the bottom of the file.

[Hollow Creek Estates, House 16.]

Beside it was another sentence: [The ending is also the beginning.]

I stared at the address.

Hollow Creek Estates was a failed luxury development on the western edge of Briarwood, Franklin, abandoned for years and rumored to be haunted.

Why would Vivian go there?

Had that man been hidden there?

Or had the empty house been their private meeting place?

I photographed the screen with my phone.

Then I shut down the computer, cleared every trace, and restored the room exactly as I had found it.

By the time I finished, cold sweat had soaked the back of my shirt.

Vivian, what have you been hiding from me?