No return address. No stamp. Because Maya didn’t know his name or where he lived.
Hannah had never sent it.
She had kept it in the backpack.
For seven years.
Julian read it twice. Then he folded it carefully, placed it in his jacket pocket, and pressed his hand against it once, the way a person presses a wound to stop the bleeding.
“I need to tell you something else,” Hannah said.
He looked up.
“The reason I came to Belladonna’s tonight. The reason I was in this part of the city at all.”
He waited.
“I got a letter. Three weeks ago. No return address. It said—” She stopped. Drew a breath. “It said that if I wanted the truth about Maya’s father, I should be at table seven at Belladonna’s on December 14th at eight o’clock. It said the truth would be sitting there.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed.
“Someone arranged this meeting.”
“Yes.”
“Someone knew you would come.”
“Someone knew I would come because someone knew I’ve been looking for the truth about those documents for two years. Ever since I found discrepancies in the dates. Ever since I started to suspect.”
“Suspect what?”
“That Richard Hale lied. That you didn’t write that letter. That you didn’t know about her.”
The silence that followed was the silence of two people standing on opposite sides of a bridge that had just been built, neither one willing to take the first step, both knowing they had to.
“Who sent the letter?” Julian asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Was it Sloane?”
Hannah turned to look at table nine. Sloane was on her phone now, speaking quietly, her face illuminated by the screen.
“I don’t think so.”
“Then who?”
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know. But whoever it was—they brought me here. They brought Maya here. They knew you’d be at this table tonight. That means someone close to you wanted this to happen.”
Julian’s jaw tightened. He looked across the room at the service hallway, at the glass door, at the rain streaming down the windows.
“Someone in my organization arranged for my daughter to walk into a room with me.”
“Or someone who loves you enough to force you to stop running.”
He looked at her.
And in his expression was something that Sloane had never seen. Not in nine years. Not once.
