THE SECRET IN THE FRAME

I opened the wrong door.

That was my only crime.

I saw Roman Hale - the most powerful man alive - so vulnerable and broken, sitting on the floor of an empty room, crying over a photograph nobody was supposed to see.

I tried to vanish as someone who doesn't exist at all, praying he hadn't seen my face, but I was so wrong.

Three days later his car was outside my building, he didn't come for an apology or to silence me-he came to cage me.

He called it an opportunity.

I call it a random for a life that I'm barely holding together

What neither of us said out loud was the thing sitting between us every single day -the secret so large it had its own weight, its own breathing room, its own four-year-old face.

He's been searching for a son he doesn't know I gave birth to.

I've been searching for a child I don't know he's been funding a war to find.

We are looking for the same person.

And the man who took him from both of us is standing in this house.

Smiling.