Lillian weathered the blow I’d just dealt her. “If she had the baby, then what?”

I tried to find words, but they all seemed shallow and insufficient. How could I adequately explain that the same reason I’d wanted to find out who my father was, the same reason I’d longed to meet the family my mom despised, the reason I’d stayed here even after I’d discovered the truth—that was exactly why I wanted to know what happened to Ana’s baby, too.

People who’d always had a family to count on and a place to belong couldn’t truly understand the draw of that little whisper that said There’s someone like you.

Someone who wouldn’t hold my origins against me.

“I just want to know,” I told Lillian, my voice low.

There was another silence, more measured than her last. Then she reached into her purse and handed me a newspaper, folded open to the business section.

I scanned the headlines but had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for.

“The article about the attempted corporate takeover,” Lillian told me. “You’ll notice that one of the companies is an international telecommunications conglomerate whose CEO is a man named Victor Gutierrez. The other company is owned by Davis Ames.”

Davis was the Ames family patriarch, grandfather to Walker and Campbell, father to the man I’d once thought was my father—the man who really was the father of Ana’s baby.

“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.

Lillian sighed. “Your mama’s friend Ana? Her full name was Ana Sofía Gutierrez.”

CHAPTER 3

A man who shared Ana’s last name—her father? brother? a more distant relation?—had made a move against the Ames family’s corporation.

Two hours of highway and back-road driving later, I was still mulling that over. As Lillian’s Porsche SUV wound its way past a guard gate, a golf course, volleyball and tennis courts, and a pool, I couldn’t help thinking that Davis Ames had once told me he’d handled the situation with the girl his son had impregnated. There was no telling exactly what that meant, but I had to wonder if business was just business for this Victor Gutierrez—or if it was personal.

Is this about Ana somehow? Revenge? For what, exactly? And why now?

“Here we are,” Lillian declared, pulling into a circle drive. “Home, sweet lake home.”

I had to compartmentalize. I couldn’t be thinking about Ana or the pact or any of this around Lily and Aunt Olivia, not if I wanted to keep pretending that I was fine, and we were fine, and there was nothing for them to worry about or know. So instead, I focused on the sights at hand. When I’d heard the rest of the family refer to the “lake house,” I’d pictured a cabin. Something small and rustic.