Sir, do you need a maid? I can do anything – my daughter is starving.” I froze when the woman looked up. It was my wife, missing for two years, our one-year-old child sleeping soundly in her arms.

The world stopped.

“Lena?”
Her lips trembled. A bruise yellowed one cheek. Her hair had been hacked short, and the elegant woman who had vanished two years earlier looked twenty years older.

“Daniel,” she whispered. “Don’t react. Your mother has people watching.”

My daughter stirred in her arms.

My daughter.

She was one year old, which meant Lena had been pregnant when she disappeared.

I opened the hotel door and said loudly, “The kitchen may need help.” Then I guided them through the lobby without touching her, though every bone in my body screamed to hold them both.

Upstairs, I locked the penthouse suite, closed the curtains, and dropped to my knees.