Julian looked at the child. Then at the wet glass door. Then at the service hallway where two of his men had vanished.
“Where is your mother?” he asked.
“In the bathroom. She said to wait somewhere safe.”
He studied her. Something in his expression shifted.
“What’s your name?”
“Maya.”
“Last name?”
Her little chin lifted.
“My mom says that’s a stranger question.”
A faint, dangerous amusement moved behind Julian Blackthorne’s eyes. Not a smile. Not quite. But something that hadn’t surfaced in seven years.
Not since a woman named Hannah Mercer disappeared from Chicago with one suitcase, a nursing school acceptance letter, and a secret his own counsel had helped bury.
The woman at table nine saw the expression.
Sloane Avery had spent nine years watching Julian’s face for signs of disaster. She had never seen him look like that.
Not once.
And then something happened that made her blood turn cold.
Julian pulled the chair back for the girl.
Gently.
Like he recognized her.
But he couldn’t possibly know her.
Could he?
The girl climbed up, placed the purple backpack carefully on her lap, and said:
“I’ll be quiet.”
And Julian Blackthorne, the most dangerous man in Manhattan, looked at this soaked, shivering child and replied:
“I doubt that.”
As if he already knew her.
As if he had always known her.
And that’s when the glass door swung open again.
The mother stepped inside.
She was breathless. Her coat was half-buttoned. Her eyes scanned the room with a panic that looked rehearsed, like she already knew exactly where her daughter would be sitting.
Then she saw Julian.
