The girl lowered her eyes. “In East New York. She’s very sick. We don’t have money. She doesn’t know I came here.”
“Cancel everything,” Harrison ordered.
“Sir, that neighborhood isn’t safe,” Grant warned.
“Now.”
The ride across the Brooklyn Bridge felt like traveling between two different countries. Skyscrapers gave way to worn brick buildings, tangled wires, cracked sidewalks. Harrison watched the girl—her name was Lily—twist a strand of hair around her finger exactly the way Isabella used to.
They stopped in front of a peeling apartment building with rusted railings.
“She’s on the third floor,” Lily whispered.
Grant carried Harrison up the narrow stairs. The hallway smelled of mildew and cheap cooking oil. Lily knocked gently.
“Mom, it’s me.”
Locks clicked. The door opened.
There she was.
Isabella Whitmore, no longer the fiery seventeen-year-old he remembered but a pale, fragile twenty-nine-year-old woman. Dark circles framed her once-bright eyes. Her hair was pulled back carelessly. Yet she was unmistakably his daughter.
When she saw him, all the color drained from her face.
“No,” she breathed. “You can’t be here.”