Leonard didn’t seem surprised. He simply nodded, wrote down the details, and said he’d contact her as soon as he found anything.
And he did.
The girl had been adopted. They named her Lynn.
A beautiful name.
Leonard gave Nina the address. She stared at the slip of paper, her hands shaking. Because the address was too close. She could’ve run into her on the street by accident. If only she’d known what Lynn looked like.
For a long time, Nina couldn’t make herself go there. She wanted just one thing — to make sure the child was okay, that she had a family, that she was loved. To convince herself she hadn’t made a mistake. That the girl would be better off without her. That no one would ever find out how and under what circumstances she’d been born.
But she never went.
She was too afraid.
She understood that if she saw her, she wouldn’t be able to leave. If she met her eyes, everything would collapse completely. She wouldn’t have the strength to let go. She’d come back again and again.
She didn’t have the right to interfere. Didn’t have the right to ruin the girl’s life for the sake of her own guilt.
Nina knew that Lynn was okay, and she forced herself to believe that should be enough.
But was it?
If Frank ever found out, he’d be enraged. They already had Daphne. A sweet, beautiful little girl who at the time was barely a year old. She’d just taken her first steps. She’d healed Nina after so many years of nightmares. Nina was supposed to think about her family, not chase after the past.
And she stepped back.
She sealed Lynn’s existence away and even started living happily.
Until recently…
CHAPTER 8
Time was slipping through Nina’s fingers like sand. She couldn’t wait anymore, couldn’t sit still and hope everything would somehow fix itself. She had to act.
The moment she got back to the hotel, she contacted a lawyer and demanded a full breakdown of their shared assets. She needed to know exactly what they owned, what had been acquired during the marriage, and what had come to her by inheritance. Now every detail mattered. Every tiny nuance could decide her fate.
But even after she sent the request, even after the lawyer assured her he’d handle it immediately, the anxiety didn’t ease. It only grew, swallowed her whole, stole the air from her lungs. Nina tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep, unable to stop thinking.
How could she have trusted a man who’d been lying to her face all this time?
If not for pure accident — for that damn car she’d had to take to the shop because of a stray cat that kept jumping on the car at night and setting off the alarm, she would’ve gone on living in sweet ignorance.
And then what? Would Frank have waited until she signed over the shares and all the paperwork — and then simply thrown her out?
Twenty years of marriage. And none of it had meant anything?
Nina sat up on the bed, covered her face with her hands, and forced herself to breathe evenly. This wasn’t the time for emotions. If she wanted to save anything at all, she had to think, not fall apart.
Early in the morning, her phone vibrated on the nightstand. Nina grabbed it so sharply it almost slipped out of her hands.
The lawyer had sent the first part of the report.
Her heart pounded as she opened the file and scrolled through the pages.
The country house was registered to both of them.
The apartment downtown was solely in her name, purchased before the marriage.
