The knock came again.
Carefully. Without rushing.
Not the sound of someone who is lost or impatient, but of someone who is waiting for an answer.
I didn't get up.
The baby moved around inside me, a soft flutter that calmed my racing thoughts. I put one hand on my stomach and breathed through my nose, counting in my head as the clinic counselor had told me to.
One, two, three.
There were three knocks.
I walked up to the door quietly and bent down to look through the peephole.
The man outside stood still, with one shoulder leaning against the door frame. He stood still, but his eyes were black and alert, taking in everything. I gasped when he looked up at the peephole.
He knew I was there.
"Ms. Ward," he said in a calm voice that carried easily through the wood. "I know you can hear me."
My heart raced.
I hadn't used that name in a few months.
He said, "I'm not here to cause trouble." "That's not the case at all. I simply want to ask a few questions.
There was more silence.
I thought about my choices.
He could wait if I didn't respond. Or come back. Instead, go up. The agency had told me that professionals don't give up easily.
I opened the door just enough to talk, but I kept the chain on.
"Yes?" I asked, my voice steady.
Dante Kade's smile came out. It wasn't wide or welcoming, but it was very focused.
"Thanks," he said. "Is it okay if I come in?"
"No," I said right away.
He chuckled softly. "That's fair."
He looked at the inside of the flat for a brief moment over my shoulder. The door to the nursery was shut. They carefully put the stroller in the corner.
There don't seem to be any signs.
Good.
He said simply, "I'm Dante." "I do risk assessment for a living."
"I don't need your help," I said.
"I know," he said in a relaxed way. "That's why I'm here."
I held on to the door more tightly.
I asked, "What do you want?"
"To make sure you're okay," Dante said. "People have been curious about you in a bad way."
"I don't care," I said.
His eyes got sharper. "It might be. When curiosity turns into a hunt."
I looked at his face.
He wasn't lying.
I asked, "Who sent you?"
Dante turned his head. "Does it matter?"
"Yes," I said. "It does."
He looked at me for a long time. Then he said softly, "Someone who used to know you."
My chest got tight.
"Then tell him I'm okay," I said. "And then he should stop looking."
Dante smiled again, a little bit amused.
"He won't," he said.
A few minutes later, Dante sat across from me at the small dining table with his coat draped over the back of the chair, as if he had been asked to.
I didn't ask him to come.
But not letting him in would have only made things worse.
Dante looked around and said, "You live quietly." "No digital footprint." Transactions in cash. Visits to the clinic under a new name. "Impressive."
I didn't say anything.
"You planned this long before you went missing," she said. "That's not common."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said calmly.
Dante's eyes moved to my hands, which were folded on the table.
Then lower.
A quarter.
I moved a little and turned my body away.
He saw.
His eyes slowly opened.
He said quietly, "Relax." "I'm not here to back up anything that hasn't been proven."
I said, "That sounds like a threat."
He said, "It's a statement." "One I hope you'll help me stay true to."
I looked him in the eye. "Mr. Kade, what do you want?"
He leaned back. "Data."
"About what?"
"About you," he asked. "And what about the Quinn Consortium?"
My blood turned cold.
"I have nothing to do with them," I said to make it clear.
Dante paid a lot of attention to me. "That's not what the timelines say."
I didn't do anything.
He slid the iPad across the table.
The screen showed dates.
He was on his way to the hospital.
Money transfers.
The Quinn news.
Dante said softly, "They overlap." "Your disappearance almost perfectly lines up with the activation of Quinn trusts that have been dormant for a long time."
"I meant that it's circumstantial," I said.
"Everything is," he said. "Until it isn't."
I pushed the iPad back at him. "You're wasting your time."
"Maybe," Dante said. "But I don't think so."
He looked at me again, this time for a longer duration.
He said suddenly, "You don't look like someone who grew up poor."
My breath was getting weaker.
"You don't carry desperation," he said. "You are disciplined. People learn their lessons in places where there are rules. Strength. "Expectations."
I made a small smile. "You're projecting."
"Am I?" Dante asked. "Or did Lucien Drake make the mistake of thinking that being close to power meant being dependent?"
The room seemed smaller.
I said quietly, "Lucien Drake divorced me."" In public. He stressed that I meant nothing to him.
Dante's lips turned slightly. "But here we are."
Lucien Drake looked at the message on his phone while he was in the city.
There was contact. She is careful. You are smarter than you think you are.
Lucien's jaws got tighter.
Is she going to have a baby? He wrote.
A break.
Then, there was no confirmation. But she's guarding something.
Lucien shut his eyes.
The picture of the child came back—those eyes and that calm, focused look.
"Don't face her," he said. I want facts, not confusion.
Dante said, "I understand." But you need to know—
Another break.
—If she is who I think she is, the Quinns didn't just happen to find her. They were waiting.
Lucien's chest got smaller.
Waiting.
Dante stood up in the apartment.
"I won't stay," he said. "You don't handle stress well."
I didn't say anything.
He stopped at the door. "But some people will try harder, and they may not be as polite."
"Is this scene meant to scare me?" I asked.
"No," he said. "It's meant to get you ready."
He opened the door and then stopped.
"One more thing," he said without turning around. "The man who hired me thinks he lost something he didn't know how to keep."
My fingers curled up in my hand.
Dante looked back at me, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking.
"Be careful," he said. "People like that don't let go easily."
He closed the door behind him.
My heart was racing as I waited a long time after he left.
Thereafter, I locked the door.
I looked at the windows.
And we went straight to the nursery.
I knelt next to the crib and watched my son sleep, his little brow wrinkling and then smoothing out again.
The same fold.
The same eyes.
I mumbled, "We're running out of time."
Lucien Drake stood in his office with the lights off and the skyline faintly reflected in the glass.
"She lived next door to me," he said quietly. "And I never saw her."
The idea didn't seem so abstract for the first time.
It felt like a loss.
And, deep down, doubt started to grow behind the confidence that had always guided him.