“Will they find us?”
“No,” I said. “Not this time.”
I drove without direction for several minutes before making a decision I should’ve made years ago.
We checked into a private suite at a high-end hotel downtown—one of the few places that still recognized me by the name I no longer used publicly.
Because that was the other truth:
For decades, I lived like a simple man.
I had been a mechanic once.
But I had also built a national logistics company from nothing.
I learned early that money attracts the wrong kind of love.
So I hid it.
Claire thought she married a comfortable man.
Not a powerful one.
I put Tyler to bed.
Then I made a call.
Dr. Samuel Carter—my closest friend.
He arrived within twenty minutes.
Ran tests immediately.
Blood. Hair. Urine.
When the results came back, his face hardened.
“Arsenic,” he said. “Chronic exposure. You’ve been poisoned for months.”
I sat down hard.
Suddenly, every glass of warm milk came back to me.
The sweetness.
The spice.
Her gentle voice.
I got sick in the bathroom.
Samuel wanted me hospitalized.
I refused.
“If there’s a record, they’ll know I’m alive.”
Instead, he started treatment privately.
Then I made another call.
A private investigator.