The message glowed on my screen while the plane climbed above Boston.
Elliot, there’s a reason I never told you.
My thumb hovered over the reply box, but Camille’s voice cut through the cabin.
“What reason?”
I looked up.
Her champagne sat untouched beside her hand.
Her wedding ring flashed like a warning.
“That message wasn’t for you.”
“No,” she said coldly. “But your possible child is now very much my problem.”
I turned toward the window.
Clouds swallowed the city beneath us, and Gate C12 felt farther away than three years.
I typed one word.
Tell me.
Naomi’s answer came almost immediately.
Because your father found out first.
My blood went still.
Another message followed.
He came to my apartment when I was four months pregnant. He said if I told you, he would destroy my clinic license and take the baby through family court.
My hand tightened around the phone.
Camille leaned closer.
“What did she say?”
I did not answer.
Then Naomi sent a photo.
It showed my father, Charles Whitmore, standing outside Naomi’s old apartment building beside a black car.
In his hand was an envelope.
The next photo was worse.
A check.
Five million dollars.
Payable to Naomi Keller.
Void across the front.
She had not cashed it.
Camille went pale.
“You knew about this?” I asked her quietly.
Her silence was enough.
The cabin seemed to tilt.
“Camille.”
She closed her eyes.
“My father handled the agreement. Your father said it was over.”
“What agreement?”
Her voice broke for the first time since our wedding.
“The marriage merger. Whitmore assets tied to Rhodes capital. If you had a child with Naomi before we married, the trust terms changed.”
I stared at the woman I had married less than twenty-four hours ago.
“You married me knowing my daughter existed?”
“I didn’t know she was yours for certain.”
“But you suspected.”
Camille looked away.
Before I could speak, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom.
“Mr. Whitmore, we’ve received an urgent instruction from Boston. We are returning to Logan.”
My phone rang.
Naomi.
When I answered, she was crying.
“Elliot, Bella’s gone.”
Then Camille’s tablet lit up with a security alert from my father’s estate.
A child had just been brought through the front gate.