This wasn't spontaneous cruelty.
It was procedure.
A system.
Caroline had done it before.
Maya continued.
“Jake has been married once before.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“Sophie knows him as never married?”
“Yes.”
“He married a woman named Melissa Grant seven years ago.”
“What happened?”
“Marriage lasted eight months. She transferred a townhouse into joint ownership. Three weeks later, Jake filed for divorce.”
“Where's Melissa?”
Maya hesitated.
“Missing.”
The corridor seemed to narrow around me.
“Missing?”
“Six years.”
“Does Sophie know?”
“Not yet.”
I looked through the glass panel in the door.
My daughter was talking quietly to Alex.
I had never seen them together as adults.
They looked alike.
Same eyes.
Same stubborn jaw.
“Tell her,” I said.
“Evelyn—”
“She has spent long enough living inside lies.”
The safe house was not a house.
It was a fortified mansion hidden behind iron gates and rows of trees outside the city.
