It’s been two weeks since Gracie’s been back in town, and not much has changed: Madeline is only at the house twice a week and I relish those moments. I’m usually gone to work before she gets in, and staying late after she heads home, but when I finally enter my home, I can smell her. Her apple-blossom shampoo and her fruity-scented body spray permeates the house, and sometimes I sit down in a spot on the couch that she has been sitting in that day and her smell will waft up my nostrils.

I found that I missed her, and it was hard hiding that from Gracie.

I was sitting at lunch and sipping on my water. I had dodged a lunch date with Gracie and Clara in order to meet two very different people. The first was my lawyer, who was helping me finalize a custody plan into which I intended to throw a great deal of money, and the second was the P.I. who had originally informed me that Gracie was back in town. He was doing good work, and I needed him to help me figure out what Gracie’s aim was.

I needed to know why she was all-of-a-sudden back in town and so willing to play family.

My usual was put down in front of me but I found myself turning my nose up at it: a medium-rare steak with garlic broccoli and whipped potatoes. There wasn’t a better steak in this town than the ones at this little hole-in-the-wall place. Plus, I knew that if I was going to stay out of Gracie’s prying eyes, I had to choose places I knew she wasn’t too familiar with. She knew all my usual upscale hangouts because, well, I used to take her to all of them.

This, of course, meant I now had to avoid them.

“Mr. Blake.”

Rosa, the long-legged snake with the beady eyes of a shark, sat down in front of me before she held up her hand, and before I could bat my eyes good a glass of crimson wine was set before her.

“So, let’s cut to the chase,” she began, “I have an agreement drawn up that says you get full custody of your surprise daughter under the argument that abandoning her on your doorstep is the first step in proving she is an unfit mother. The issue here is that setting a child on your doorstep, especially after she returns, doesn’t make her an unfit mother in the eyes of the court, no matter how much money you throw at it. I will need to fill in a few holes on my end, but if your P.I. can get me concrete proof that she truly is an unfit parent, the courts will have no problems giving you custody of Clara. You’ve done well, staying out of the public eye for the past few years, so your indiscretions in your twenties should be overlooked.”

I was a wild man in my twenties: dating, hook ups, sex parties, staying out late and missing important meetings in the morning. That’s what you do as a twenty-six year old who had the kind of money I did back then: I made more money than I knew how to spend, and that included buying my own island.

Yes, I own my own private island off the coast of the Scottish Hebrides.

“Is there anything else?” I murmured.

She took a sip of her wine and kept her eyes connected with mine. She was studying me as she always did, with great intention and deliberate notice. She was the most ruthless lawyer in the New York City arena, and I kept her on speed dial in case anything went south with any of the businesses I flipped. There wasn’t a contract issue she couldn’t talk her way around, no matter the wording in the official document.

“I want this iron-clad. Gracie’s manipulating me somehow, and she’s using her own daughter to do it. That girl is-”

I clenched my jaw and picked up my water. Taking a big gulp helped to ease the knot in my throat, but I knew she’d seen the flicker of vulnerability in my eyes. That’s the thing about working with a shark: they prey on anything, whether they are in control or backed into a corner.

A drop of blood all tastes the same, no matter the situation or consequence.

“I don’t play when it comes to children,” she murmured lowly.

It prompted me to turn my gaze towards her. The tone of her voice and the way her eyes iced over… it was as if I had hit a nerve I didn’t understand I was toeing around.

“I’ll pay whatever necessary,” I bit out bluntly.

“I know you will,” she shot back.

“I’ll let you know when my P.I. contacts me.”

“No need.”

Both of us panned our gazes up as Chris Waterback came into view. He used to be the head detective in the Special Victims Unit of the New York police force, but when he retired, he lost his wife to cancer and started up his own private investigation firm. He was the news headline for weeks, talking about how he couldn’t cope with his wife’s death and how he couldn’t handle his retirement alone.

They ripped him to shreds until he started to consult with the exact same police department, making double what he had been making, doing exactly the same job. The man was a genius, and I admired someone who could raise their head high after being mutilated like that and spit in their face while taking their money.

He reminded me vaguely of myself.

He pulled a chair over and turned it around before straddling the entire seat. Then he slapped a manila envelope onto the counter as Rosa and I both looked at it blankly.

“I can’t appreciate theatrics until I know why they’re occurring,” Rosa murmured.

I grabbed the envelope and opened it up. I slid out picture after picture of Gracie in front of a doctor’s office whose name I recognized immediately, and at first I was confused… until I flipped to the very last pictures and saw Gracie, without my daughter, kissing some man in a white coat outside of the building.

“Tuesdays and Thursdays when your nanny is at the house, she goes here,” he pointed, “Every Tuesday and Thursday like clockwork.”

“That’s the doctor’s office she told me she had her health appointments transferred to,” I said.

“I just snapped these pictures because I figured I’d come back and tell ya she was cheating or something. She goes there, meets him outside, ‘macks for a while, then goes in. I assumed she was just… doin’ the doctor that was caring for her.”

“But…?” Rosa asked.

If you could pique Rosa’s interest, then you knew you had a story on your hands.

“She told you she had cancer, so I wanted to just double-check and make sure. I did some digging, made some phone calls, and made a trip to the hospital where she gave birth. I even schmoozed a nurse who let me have a peek at her files.”

“You dog, you,” Rose smirked.

“Not that kinda schmooze, hun.”

“What did you find?” I interrupted.

“I found the official record of Clara’s birth; and she did have her uterus removed. There was a tumor that was growin’ alongside Clara the entire time. Issue is, Gracie told you the hCG levels of her pregnancy were keepin’ the tumor at bay. Not true: the hCG levels in her body were prompting it to grow. When she had Clara, they removed her uterus at her request. The tumor was benign.”

I white-knuckled the pictures in front of me as my vision began to fade to black. That bitch strolled up into my home, held my daughter in her arms, and told me she had been dying of cancer. For the love of fuck, she ripped off a wig.

What was she doing? Shaving her head?

“No treatment for it, no nothin’,” Chris said.

“I’ve been giving her checks for her treatment because she doesn’t have health insurance and I can’t legally cover her unless we’re married. Where the hell is that money going? I check my bank accounts regularly, and they are being cashed at that doctor’s office!”

“This is where you get two for the price of one, Rosa,” Chris said as he turned his head towards the woman. “You get to give this man his daughter and put away a doctor for embezzlement.”

“He’s cashing the checks for appointments and treatments not happenin’, and then taking that cashed money for himself.” Rosa smirked at this.

She always loves a good story.

“Is that embezzlement if the treatments aren’t even taking place?”

“It is when you have me in court,” Rosa said as she fingered the pictures lightly.

“How long has she been seeing this doctor?” she asked.

“That man is Dr. Timothy Raul, and I did some serious diggin’ into him.”

And that was when he turned his head slowly towards me and asked me a very pointed question.

“How long were you and Gracie together before she got pregnant?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just… how long?”

My heart rate was skyrocketing and I couldn’t see straight.

“Uh… a little over a year. Why?”

I felt myself beginning to sweat. My curiosity had turned to anger; my anger was morphing into panic. Madeline wasn’t at the house, which meant this disgusting human being was currently feeding my daughter from the bosom another man was probably suckling on twice a week.

The thought made me want to puke.

But nothing that was running through my head could’ve ever prepared me for the next document he slid out of the manila envelope.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Blake,” Chris murmured as he slid it over.

The only things that registered were the words “Certificate of Marriage.” At that point, everything else became a blur. Rosa ripped it from my hands and began rattling off her strategy for how she was going to tweak the custody agreement, and she was already drawing up plans to put Dr. Raul in prison for at least a decade. But all I could think about was the sham the past two years of my life had been. The free-spirited, loud-mouthed, kinky woman I’d fallen in love with had been fucking married.

And at any other point in my life, I wouldn’t have given a shit.

But that bitch had my daughter, and I was done looking through this damn envelope.

“Sum it up, Waterback,” I bit.

Chris slid the rest of the folder over to Rosa as she continued to remove handfuls of documents. Bank statements and credit card accounts, more pictures of them together and buried pictures of their marriage ceremony and honeymoon.

“We’ve got her,” Rosa whispered. “Derek, we’ve got her: her and him.”

“And she’s got my daughter,” I growled before I stood up and buttoned my coat.

“I’m coming with you,” Chris stood.

“And so am I,” Rosa added.

It was then that I turned my icy gaze slowly towards Chris and drew a deep breath through my nose.

“The summary, now, just so I know I’m drawing the right conclusions.”

“She was married when she met you, and my guess is she saw an opportunity for some money and took it. If that wasn’t her aim before, it sure as hell is now. Your cashed checks are spilling into a bank account linked to both of them. My guess is she would’ve played this charade as long as she could’ve.”

I felt the wind rush from my lungs even as I rolled my shoulders back. I could feel the blood pulsating through my ears even as my hands stayed calm at my sides. I shored up my body and turned towards the door, and when I began to move, they followed right behind me. Chris got on the phone with someone and Rosa called her office to start making changes to the document. She said something about needing a hard copy by the end of the day and Chris rattled off something about arresting officers at some address or whatever.

But I wasn’t paying attention.

I wouldn’t be all right until Clara was in my arms and Gracie was in handcuffs.