Nobody moved.
I felt my chest tighten.
“Find him?” I asked. “You KNOW this boy?”
Sophia suddenly tried to leave, but two security guards blocked the ballroom doors.
The boy began crying.
“My mother told me if anything happened to her, I should find Ethan.”
That was my name.
Then he handed me a sealed envelope.
Inside was a letter dated three years earlier.
My hands started shaking as I read the first sentence:
“Ethan, if you’re reading this, Sophia finally did what she threatened to do.”
Sophia screamed, “THAT LETTER IS FAKE!”
But her mother suddenly stood up.
“No,” she said quietly.
Everyone turned toward her.
Tears were running down her face.
“I helped Sophia hide the truth.”
The room exploded with gasps.
Then she revealed that the missing woman had once been Sophia’s closest friend—and had discovered something Sophia was desperate to keep secret.
But the biggest shock came when the little boy looked at me and asked:
“Did my mom ever tell you that you’re my father?”
I couldn’t breathe.
Sophia collapsed into a chair.
And suddenly I understood why she had spent three years making sure that boy never found me.
