Chapter 2

Months passed.

I named the baby Leo. My Leo.

The man, I still called him John, was good with him.

He' d recovered physically, but his mind was still a blank about his past.

He helped around the cabin, chopped wood, seemed content in our quiet world.

Then one morning, just after Leo' s first birthday, it happened.

John was staring out the window, a strange look on his face.

He turned to me, his eyes sharp, focused in a way I hadn' t seen.

"Sarah," he said, his voice different, deeper. "My name is Alexander Sterling."

My heart stopped.

He remembered. Everything.

He told me then, bits and pieces. A powerful family in New England. Politics. Money.

He looked horrified, not at me, but at himself, at his lost months.

"They' ve been looking for me," he said. "My family… there was a crisis."

A few hours later, a black helicopter landed in the clearing.

A man in a suit got out, sharp, efficient. Jax. Alex' s head of security.

Alex, or Alexander, looked at me, at Leo playing on the floor.

His face was a mask of conflict.

"My world," he said, his voice strained. "It' s not safe for you. For him."

He pulled out an envelope thick with cash. A lot of cash.

"Take this. Start over. Please."

He didn' t kiss me goodbye. He barely looked at Leo.

Then he was gone, whisked away by the helicopter, back to a life I couldn' t imagine.

The money felt like a payoff.

Abandonment.

A rich man, using a lonely woman, then discarding her.

That' s how it felt. That' s all I could see.