A Decision Made in Silence
Celeste adjusted her sunglasses and turned toward me, impatience flickering across her face.
“Can we go now? I don’t want to sit here all day.”
Her voice carried irritation rather than compassion. Although part of me wanted to step out of the vehicle and run after Maren—to demand answers or perhaps offer the apology I should have given long ago—another part of me understood that any confrontation with Celeste present would achieve nothing except alert her.
If those children were mine, and every instinct inside me said they were, then something far more calculated than a simple misunderstanding had taken place.
I pressed my foot onto the accelerator again and merged back into traffic. I dropped Celeste at an upscale boutique in downtown Lexington under the excuse that I had a meeting I needed to attend alone. Then I drove straight to the headquarters of Halbrook Infrastructure, the engineering firm I had built from modest beginnings into a respected regional company.
From the top floor of our glass-walled building, the city stretched outward in orderly grids, while inside my office the silence felt almost suffocating.
I shut the door and called the one person I trusted to untangle complicated situations without drawing attention.
Gideon Pike had once worked as a compliance auditor before moving into private investigations, and his careful attention to detail had saved my company from costly mistakes more than once.
When he answered, his voice carried the steady calm I needed.
“Gideon, I need you to look into Maren Caldwell,” I said, keeping my tone even despite the turmoil inside me. “Where she’s been since the divorce, how she’s been supporting herself, and especially the two children she’s with.”
There was a brief pause before he spoke.
“You think they’re yours.”
It wasn’t phrased as a question.
“I need to know the truth,” I replied. “And reopen everything from the divorce. The transfers, the photos, the pendant. Every detail. I want to understand exactly how that evidence appeared.”
He didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll start today.”
