Part 4 — I Ran from Him for Six Months, but When He Saw Me at the Ultrasound Clinic, His Face Changed in One Second

Dr. Morrison snatched the phone from my hand.

“Do not save the number,” he said.

“It is already too late,” Caspian replied.

His guard went to the door. The sound of footsteps could be heard outside, but no one came in.

Caspian brought the phone to his ear.

“Lock all the exits. Do not shoot anyone until I tell you.”

The old Caspian returned to his voice. The man whom all of Boston feared.

But for the first time I did not flinch.

“You will not kill anyone,” I told him.

He looked at me.

“I will not kill anyone.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Dr. Morrison called the police, while Caspian called his lawyer. Within a few seconds, his face changed.

“What do you mean, you refuse?” he said into the phone. “For six years you have handled my affairs.”

I read the answer only from Caspian’s face.

“No, you are not afraid of the court,” he said. “You are afraid of what you will say about Darian.”

He ended the call.

“The lawyer refused to help,” he told me.

“Because Darian bought him?”

“No. Because his name is also on that list.”

For the first time I realized how large the network in which Caspian lived was.

And how close it had come to me.

The police arrived twenty minutes later. They had already detained Nora because Caspian’s men found a second phone in the trunk of her car.

Nora shouted that she knew nothing.

“I only gave them the address!”

“To whom?” the investigator asked.

Nora looked at Caspian and bit her lips.

“To Darian.”

Dr. Morrison handed the recording to the investigator.

Then Caspian placed the old recording, on which his voice could be heard, on the table.

“You have to make an example of him.”

I heard these words again.

But this time Darian’s voice followed:

“If he dies, we will tell everyone that Caspian ordered it.”

Caspian stood against the wall and listened to his own voice.

For the first time I saw on his face the face of a man who had to listen to his own past.

“You said this yourself,” I told him.

“I know.”

“It may not matter to other people that there is a difference.”

“I know.”

“It matters to me.”

He lowered his head.

The next day Darian was arrested at the city station. In his bag they found copies of the clinic cameras, transfer statements, and photographs of me from six months earlier. The most dangerous thing was a small card on which only one sentence was written: “The child will be Caspian’s end.”

Darian waited for trial.

Caspian did too.

But only after he handed all the recordings, accounts, and names to the investigators.

“If I do this, I will lose everything,” he told me on the night before the trial.

“You have already lost the life that frightened others.”

“And you?”

“I am trying to choose my life myself for the first time.”

He nodded.

“If you want, we will move you and the child to a safe place.”

“Only on the condition that you do not come there uninvited.”

A bitter smile appeared on his lips.

“That is the most difficult condition I have ever received.”

“You still have to accept it.”

He accepted it.

Three weeks later I left my small studio. There was no fear on the walls anymore, only two suitcases and an ultrasound image lying on the bed. Caspian watched me from a distance while I got into the car.

“Sloane,” he called.

I stopped.

“Thank you for believing me.”

“I do not believe you yet.”

“I know.”

That was our last conversation for a long time.

Five months later a boy was born.

I named him Leo.

On the child’s birthday Caspian sent only one letter. Inside was a small wooden toy and one sentence: “If you ever allow me, I will get to know him as his father and not as Caspian Reed.”

I folded the letter.

I left it.

But I did not write a reply.

Six months later I started working at a small family clinic in Providence. In the mornings I met patients, and in the evenings I bathed Leo. He soon learned to draw and drew the same thing in every picture: a house, a big yellow sun, and three people who had not let go of each other’s hands.

One evening he handed me a drawing.

“This is you, Mama.”

“Who is this?”

“Dad.”

“Why is he outside the house?”

Leo shrugged.

“Because he is still knocking on the door.”

I smiled, but my eyes filled with tears.

That night someone really knocked on the door.

Caspian stood alone. He had neither guards nor an expensive car. In his hand he held only an old paper bag.

“Can I come in for five minutes?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded.

“Then I will leave only this for you.”

From the bag he took out a small blue knitted vest for Leo. An iridescent copper-colored seahorse was embroidered on it.

Like my pendant.

“You received it from your mother,” he said. “I just wanted him to have something that would not make him forget your childhood.”

I looked at the vest.

“Caspian, if you want to see your son, it will happen according to the court’s rules. My rules. Slowly.”

“I agree.”

“And you will no longer control my life.”

“Never again.”

He left the way he had come. Quietly.

I put Leo’s vest away in a drawer of the wardrobe, while I enclosed my small copper seahorse pendant in my palm.

For the first time it was not cold.

No one knocked on the door anymore.

And I had a home of my own.