I never expected three little triplets pointing at my tattoo to unlock an eight-year-old secret I thought was buried forever.

I didn't go home that night.

I walked. For hours. Through Central Park, down Fifth Avenue, past the luxury buildings where people like the Montgomerys lived in worlds I'd never touch.

My forearm throbbed where the tattoo sat under my skin, suddenly feeling like a brand instead of a memory.

I stopped at a twenty-four-hour diner, ordered coffee I didn't drink, and pulled out my phone.

Camila Montgomery.

I typed the name into the search bar with shaking fingers.

Pages and pages of results flooded the screen. Society page photos. Charity galas. Business articles about her husband, Richard Sterling, a real estate mogul whose name appeared in the same breath as words like "ruthless" and "untouchable."

There she was.

Camila Sterling, née Montgomery.

Her face stared back at me from a photo taken at some black-tie event last month. She was beautiful, more polished than the girl I'd known in Seattle, but those eyes... those were the same eyes that had looked into mine across a tattoo parlor at four in the morning.

The article said she'd married Richard Sterling eight years ago. Almost to the day.

My vision blurred.

I scrolled further. Three daughters, it said. Regina, Lucy, and Valerie. Born seven years ago.

Triplets.

The diner's fluorescent lights seemed to pulse as I did the math in my head. Seattle. One night. Eight years ago. Triplets born seven years ago.

It added up. Every terrifying, wonderful, impossible piece of it added up.

I found more photos. Camila at various events, always smiling that perfect society smile. But looking closer, I saw what others probably missed. The tightness around her eyes. The way she always stood slightly behind her husband, her shoulders hunched like she was trying to make herself smaller.

Richard Sterling stood tall beside her in every picture, his arm possessive around her waist. His smile never reached his eyes.

I found articles about him too. Lawsuits he'd buried. Competitors he'd ruined. Rumors of temper, of control, of a marriage that looked perfect from the outside but was anything but behind closed doors.

My blood ran cold.

I thought of those three little girls in the park. Their calm, observant eyes. The way the nanny had panicked, had looked over her shoulder like she expected someone to be watching.

"Ms. Montgomery is going to be furious."

Not Ms. Sterling. Ms. Montgomery.

Like the nanny, in her fear, had slipped up and used the name Camila was born with. The name she'd used when we met.

I left the diner at dawn, my mind made up.

I couldn't let this go.

Not when three little girls might be my daughters.

Not when the woman I'd never stopped thinking about might be trapped in a gilded cage with a monster.

I went to my apartment, showered, changed into the only clean shirt I owned that didn't have paint or drywall dust on it. I grabbed the shoebox from the back of my closet—the one I'd kept sealed for eight years.

Inside, the napkin.

Faded now, the ink bleeding, but still there. My broken compass.

And beneath it, a single photograph. Camila, her hair messy, her face glowing from the neon sign outside the bar, holding up her freshly tattooed shoulder and grinning like she owned the world.

I'd taken that photo with my old phone, printed it out the next day before she disappeared.

Before she left Seattle without a note, without a goodbye, without any way to find her.

I'd thought she'd just been another girl passing through. Another adventure that ended when the sun came up.

I'd been so wrong.

I tucked the photo in my wallet and the napkin in my pocket. Then I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door.

The Montgomery-Sterling Foundation was hosting a charity luncheon that afternoon at the Plaza Hotel. The society pages had announced it weeks ago.

Camila would be there.