Chapter 2 - The Photograph at My Door

The phone rang a second time before Dominic answered.

"Bellano."

He listened. I watched the muscle beside his jaw tighten.

"Is she safe?" he asked.

The words turned my blood cold.

I stood in his office with the tea cooling between my fingers, my purse pressed against the place where our baby was growing. On the other side of the windows, Lake Michigan lay blue and indifferent beneath the afternoon sky.

"I understand," Dominic said. "Keep him there. No one speaks to him until I arrive."

He replaced the receiver.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"My security director. Someone used your name to request a copy of your medical appointment records."

The cup rattled against its saucer when I set it on his desk.

"You called my doctor."

"I called the clinic after my security team found the request. I asked them to protect your information. They confirmed nothing about your health."

I looked at him. "Then how did you know where I went?"

His silence lasted one beat too long.

"An account connected to Victor Raines made inquiries about you this morning," he said. "My team traced the request to the clinic."

Victor. The man who had confronted Dominic at the charity gala nine weeks earlier. The man whose companions had followed us into a hallway until Dominic hurried me away.

"You had someone following me?"

"No. We noticed a search for your name in a system that flags threats to my employees. I should have told you the moment I knew."

"You should have asked me before calling anyone connected to my private appointment."

"You're right."

The admission was so immediate that I hardly knew what to do with it.

Dominic pulled the chair opposite his desk away from the table, but he did not touch me.

"Please sit. You're shaking."

"I know I'm shaking."

He stepped back. "You can leave. I won't stop you. But Raines knows enough about today's appointment to look for records, and I need you to know that before you walk out."

I sank into the chair, not because he had asked, but because my knees could no longer hold me steadily. The purse lay across my lap. I could feel the paper photograph inside it as surely as if it were pressed against my skin.

"What does Victor want from me?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know, or you won't tell me?"

His eyes met mine. "I don't know. But I suspect he's looking for something he can use against me."

Four years at Bellano Tower had taught me what that could mean. A signature on a contract. A schedule left on a desk. A woman who knew which elevators Dominic used and when his meetings ran late.

And now, perhaps, a baby.

He glanced at the bag in my lap and then away.

"Penny, I noticed you've been ill. I thought the tea might help. I didn't know whether you'd want to talk about it."

He had used my nickname. The sound was unbearably familiar.

"Did you have the floor cleared?"

"Yes. Security found that someone had obtained a temporary visitor credential. I moved the analysts downstairs while we confirmed the credential was disabled."

"And you let me walk onto an empty floor without telling me why."

"I handled that badly."

There was something exhausting about having him agree with every accusation when I had come prepared for him to deny them all.

He reached for a slim folder on his desk and opened it where I could see. Inside was a printed access report. I recognized the ordinary format: a security log with time stamps and authorization fields. One entry showed a visitor credential issued under a false vendor account that morning. My name appeared in a search field in the attached incident note.

"You can have a copy," Dominic said. "The incident will be reported to the police."

I stared at the paper. "Why would Victor risk coming here?"

"He hasn't come here himself. Someone working for him may have. We're checking the evidence."

The distinction mattered. Dominic had enough enemies that speculation could become a dangerous kind of certainty.

"There was a reason I left your penthouse before sunrise," I said.

He closed the folder.

For weeks I'd replayed the charity gala, the penthouse, the way neither of us had spoken afterward. I had mistaken his restraint for indifference because indifference was easier to live with than hope.

"I thought you regretted it," he said.

"I thought you did."

His face changed. Not dramatically. Only the guarded muscles around his eyes relaxed for a moment.

"I didn't," he said.

The tea had stopped steaming. My hands remained on my purse.

"I can't have this conversation while someone is searching for my medical records."

"Then we won't."

He slid a card across the desk. An independent security consultant's number, not one of his personal guards. "You can choose someone else. You don't have to let my people near your home. I only want you to have the information."

"My apartment has no security," I said, remembering the explanation he had given nine weeks earlier.

"I remember."

I opened my purse to find a tissue. The ultrasound photograph caught against the packet, and its white corner slid into view. I pushed it back too quickly.

Dominic saw the movement. He did not reach for the bag.

"Whatever you were told at the clinic," he said, "it's yours to share or keep private."

It should have reassured me. Instead, I thought of Friday, my savings, and the Iowa bakery where I had planned to disappear.

"I need to go home."

He nodded and stood aside as I moved toward the door. "I'll have the security report sent to you. No escort unless you ask for one."

At the threshold I turned. "Did your security director catch the person with the visitor credential?"

Dominic looked at the silent phone.

"Not yet. They found the credential on the building's forty-second floor."

One floor below my desk.

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As I left, my own phone vibrated in my purse. An unfamiliar number had sent a single photograph: the entrance to my apartment building, taken that morning. No words accompanied it.

The person looking for me hadn't stopped at the clinic.