We Ran From Our Babies' Fathers, Then One Toddler Went Viral novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Assistant

Preston's POV

My lawyers called it a nuisance filing.

They said a New York judge wouldn't touch a Portuguese child without a hearing, and that a hearing would take months.

I told them I wasn't worried about the judge.

I was worried about my mother, who never filed anything she didn't plan to read aloud.

She had a dinner in eight days.

The Aldridge Foundation held it every year at a hotel in Lisbon, for the children's hospital, and she had chaired it for twenty years.

Four hundred donors would be in that room.

If she meant to tell her version of Hannah to anyone, that was the night.

So I stopped trying to hide behind lawyers and went looking for the one person who could contradict her.

My head of security found the address by noon.

It was a flat in Estoril, third floor, with a bicycle chained on the landing.

I had not seen the woman in three years.

She had been my personal assistant for six, ever since I took over the company, and the one who learned my coffee order before I knew I had one.

She opened the door with a dish towel in her hand and went completely gray.

"Mr. Aldridge."

"I'd like five minutes."

"I was going to write to you," she said.

"Were you?"

"Every month for two years."

She stood aside.

The kitchen was small and warm, with a toddler's cup on the table and a stack of unpaid letters.

I didn't sit.

"Tell me what you did," I said.

She gripped the dish towel in both hands.

"She called me at midnight, the woman. Hannah. She said her name twice. She asked for you. She said she wasn't asking for anything, that she only thought you should know."

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