Page 119 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
My thumb hovers over the send button. Once I do this, there's no taking it back. I'm drawing a line, establishing a boundary, demanding space that he may or may not respect.
I press send.
The response comes almost immediately:Poppy, please. Let me explain—
I don't read the rest. I turn off the phone and slip it into my bag.
***
James is in the kitchen when I come downstairs, drinking coffee with Mrs. Bloom. They both look up when I enter, their expressions carefully neutral.
"I need a car," I say. "I'm going to visit my mother."
James sets down his cup. "Does Mr. Ambrose know?"
"I've informed him. He's not my jailer, James. I'm allowed to leave."
Something flickers in his eyes—doubt, maybe, or concern—but he nods slowly. "Of course, miss. I'll bring the car around."
Mrs. Bloom watches me with worried eyes. "Are you all right, dear? You look pale."
"I'm fine. Just tired."
It's the same lie I've been telling for weeks. She doesn't believe it any more than Gabriel did, but she doesn't push. She just presses a thermos of tea into my hands and tells me to be careful.
The drive to my mother's apartment takes one hour. I spend most of it staring out the window, watching the landscape change from rolling estates to suburban sprawl to the modest neighborhood where my mother has lived for the past decade.
It's the longest she's ever stayed in one place. I used to think that meant she finally felt safe, that whatever she'd been running from had faded into memory.
Now I know the truth: she was running from a ghost. Twenty-five years of looking over her shoulder, and the man she feared was already dead.
Because Gabriel killed him. Three months after I was born, while my mother was still changing my diapers and learning to survive on her own, a sixteen-year-old boy wrapped his hands around Dwayne Thomas's throat and ended the threat she didn't know existed.
She deserves to know. Whatever else happens, whatever I decide about Gabriel and the baby and my own future, my mother deserves to know that her nightmare is over. That it's been over for a quarter century.
James drops me at the curb outside her building. "Shall I wait, miss?"
"No. I'll call when I'm ready to come back."
IfI'm ready to come back. But I don't say that part out loud.
I watch him drive away, then turn to face the building. It's modest—clean but unremarkable, the kind of place that doesn't attract attention. My mother has always chosen places like this. Places where she can disappear.
I climb the stairs to her apartment and knock on the door.
It takes a moment before I hear movement inside—the shuffle of footsteps, the click of locks being undone. Then the door opens, and my mother's face appears in the gap.
"Poppy?" Her eyes widen with surprise, then narrow with concern. "What are you doing here? Is everything all right?"
No. Nothing is all right. Nothing has been all right since I walked into that gala and saw a man standing over a corpse.
But I can't say that. Not yet. Not standing in the hallway where anyone might hear.
"Can I come in?" My voice cracks despite my best efforts to control it. "I need to talk to you. About my father. About everything."
My mother's face goes pale. For a moment, I think she's going to refuse—going to slam the door and pretend I never came, the way she's pretended my entire life.
But then she steps back, opening the door wider.
