13
Five years later, I was living in Australia. One day, Olivia called me.
“Mom, you need to run. A reporter wrote an article about your success story and posted it online. The three of them just bought plane tickets. They’re on their way.”
I clicked the link she sent. The headline was bold:
【The Phoenix Rises: How One Woman Started a Business at 50 and Took It Public in Just Five Years.]
Before I could finish reading, my secretary knocked. “Ms. Jiang, there’s a gentleman here who insists on seeing you. He doesn’t have an appointment, and security can’t stop him.”
I waved a hand. “Let him in.”
Five years ago, I would have been terrified of Howard finding me. Not anymore.
Success is a woman’s best armor.
After the news of our “deaths,” Howard hadn’t given up. He and the boys had hired team after team of divers
to search the ocean. For two whole months, he refused to call off the search. He said he needed to see our bodies. Until then, he wouldn’t believe we were gone.
The news reported that his hair had turned white overnight, that he had gone mad with grief.
Sienna had knelt before him, begging him to accept reality. “Godfather, please, you have to move on. Even
7/11
Chapter 2
though Godmother is gone, you still have me and my brothers.”
12.47
Howard had shoved her away, clutching a photo of me. “Don’t you ever call me that again. Eleanor neve agreed to be your godmother. She never wanted Adrian and Jack to be your brothers. I can’t upset her any more. If I do, she’ll never let me find her. Leave this house. And never show your face to me or my son
again.”
I heard Sienna had refused to leave, kneeling outside the Hawthorne estate for a week. But Howard was ghost of himself, and his resolve was absolute. He never let her set foot in the house again.
