Chapter 1
I froze mid-sip of scotch when the new maid apologized.
Not because of the broken glass.
Because I’d know that voice anywhere.
I was in my Seattle penthouse, still in the tailored suit I’d worn to close a $2 billion tech deal an hour earlier. The Puget Sound glinted gray outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, but I barely saw it. I’d spent 18 years running from the sound of that voice, and now it was in my living room.
The agency had sent her that morning.
Quiet, kept her head down, uniform crisp, name tag pinned to her chest that read EVE.
I’d barely glanced at her, too busy scrolling through post-deal emails, until her elbow knocked over the hand-cut crystal whiskey glass on my coffee table.
It was my mom’s. The only thing I’d kept of hers after she died when I was 16.
It shattered on the marble floor, shards skittering under the couch like scared mice.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” she whispered, dropping to her knees so fast her knees cracked. “I’ll pay for every penny, I promise, just please don’t fire me. I need this job.”
That voice.
Soft, a little rough around the edges, with that tiny, breathy lilt she only got when she was terrified.
I’d last heard it 18 years earlier, in the backseat of my beat-up 1998 Ford F-150, parked by the river in our tiny Oregon hometown.
I was 17, leaving for Army basic training the next morning.
Evelyn Carter had curled into my chest, her fingers tangled in my shirt, and promised she’d wait forever.
Said she’d marry me the second I came home.
Two weeks before my enlistment ended, she vanished.
No note. No call. No goodbye.
Everyone in town said she’d run off with a rich tourist passing through. Said she’d never cared about me at all, just used me for a place to sleep until something better came along.
I spent 10 years hating her so much it burned.
Another 8 building a billion-dollar company from scratch, working 100-hour weeks, just to make sure I never had to think about her name again.
And now she was on her knees in my living room, picking up shards of my mom’s glass with her bare fingers.
“Look at me,” I said.
My voice was so rough, so raw, I barely recognized it as my own.
She froze.
Her shoulders hunched up to her ears, like she was bracing for a slap.
Slowly, so slowly it felt like hours, she lifted her face.
There it was.
The thin white scar above her left eyebrow.
The one she’d gotten shoving me out of the way of a speeding dirt bike when we were 16. She’d taken the handlebar to the face, needed seven stitches, and laughed through the whole thing because I wasn’t hurt.
“Evelyn,” I breathed.
Her eyes flooded with tears so fast they spilled over, tracking down her cheeks. She shook her head fast, strands of her brown hair falling loose from her bun.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. My name is Eve Miller.”
Her voice cracked clean through the last word.
I leaned down, my hand shaking a little as I brushed the collar of her uniform aside.
Tucked under the fabric, on a thin silver chain, was the locket I’d given her for our senior prom.
Our initials—J.H. + E.C.—were still carved deep into the back, worn smooth from 18 years of being touched.
Margaret, my housekeeper of 12 years, stormed into the room then, her face tight with annoyance. She’d been on my case all week about finding a reliable second maid.
“Eve, stop wasting Mr. Hale’s time,” she snapped, wiping her hands on her apron. “You’re already three bathrooms behind, and you begged me for extra shifts last week to pay for your son’s kidney transplant. Don’t make me regret hiring you.”
My blood turned to slush in my veins.
Son.
Kidney transplant.
I didn’t take my eyes off Evelyn’s terrified face.
“How old is he?” I asked.
She flinched like I’d slapped her.
Her mouth opened and closed a few times before any sound came out.
“Seventeen,” she whispered, so quiet I almost didn’t hear it over the hum of the penthouse AC.
Seventeen.
I did the math in my head so fast it made my head spin.
Exactly nine months to the day after I’d boarded that Greyhound bus for Fort Lewis.
I’d never even touched another girl after I left. Never wanted to.
I opened my mouth to demand his name, to scream that she owed me 18 years of answers, when the elevator behind me dinged.
The doors slid open.
A lanky 17-year-old kid stepped through, holding a tattered blue backpack slung over one shoulder.
He had my exact hazel eyes.
My crooked left smile, the one I’d hated as a kid.
The same unruly cowlick at the crown of his head I’d had since I was his age, no matter how much gel I used.
May you like
He squinted at us across the room, confused by the tension thick enough to cut.
“Mom?” he called, his voice still cracking a little at the edges. “You texted me to bring your blood pressure meds before my diner shift. Everything okay?”
