Page 10 of The Billionaire's Lost Family

The woman was already unzipping the luggage greedily. Wesley swallowed, pocketed the money, and stepped outside. The instant he did, a hand on his arm nearly made him jump out of his skin. The short man had laid in wait to confront Wesley on the street.

A child wheeled unsteadily past on a small bicycle, lessening the intensity of the situation and keeping Wesley from holding up his fists in his own defense as he was tempted to do. He gulped a breath, wishing it would slow his heart.

“What do you want?” Wesley demanded. He didn’t mean to come across so sharply, but this man had been watching him in the store and made his suspicions heighten. Was he going to rob him? What would he and Hazel do then? The money the shopkeeper had given him was all the Brazilian currency they had left.

The man offered a nod. “You. You steal the bag?” He pointed to the shop they’d both just left.

Did this man mean Hazel’s suitcase? Why would he be asking that?

Wesley shook his head. “No,” he said. “But my wife’s similar bag went missing.”

This registered something for the man, but Wesley couldn’t quite tell what. Surprise? His brows lifted and something like excitement dawned. It was the kind of expression people employed when finding the next clue during a game. “Your—wife?”

“Yes.”

“Where?” The man glanced around as if Hazel was about to leap from the shadows any moment.

“She’s a few streets away,” Wesley said. “Back there.” He pointed in the hotel’s direction, wondering who this person was. Maybe the woman had heard Hazel’s phone call earlier and this man represented their police force. Was he trying to help Wesley find the bag and the phone that had gone missing?

The man shook his head, a line connecting his brows. “No. No. Where is your wife?”

Wesley stiffened inside. He’d had an uneasy feeling about this guy from the start. Who was he, and why was he asking about Hazel? Suddenly, he wanted very badly to get out of this country and go back home. “Why?”

The man held up a finger. He delved his hand into a deep pocket of his pants. Wesley’s pulse ticked. What was he searching for? Everything in him shouted at him to run, to get away while he could.

Before he could move, the man retrieved the object of his search and held it for Wesley to see. His fist was closed around a familiar, brown hat, a fascinator with velvet fabric and a crumpled veil that had seen better days. Wesley had dealt with similar hats more times than he could count, but this wasn’t just any hat. His heart lodged in his chest.

That was Hazel’s birth mother’s hat. But how had this man gotten it?

6

Wesley’s pulse climbed skyward. A raging impulse overtook him to yank the hat from his grasp, but Wesley had never been a forceful man. He clenched every muscle in his body and offered his hand instead.

The Brazilian man with wrinkled bronze skin and graying hair spoke rapid Portuguese. Wesley spoke over him, his patience thinner than a sheet of paper. “That’s hers. She’s been looking everywhere for it. Give it back, please.”

He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard his own voice sound quite so stern. He was demanding and insistent, borderline threatening. This was an entirely new side of himself, but this was also his wife they were talking about, and he would give everything he had to defend her.

What was this guy doing with Hazel’s mother’s hat? According to Hazel, the hat had been in her purse the day before.

“Where did you find it?” Wesley asked, deciding to try a different tack. There were only a handful of ways this man could have gotten it. Did he know Franco? Did he work at the airport? If Hazel had left it on top of their car before they’d driven off, had this man seen the bag where it had fallen on the side of the road? Franco would really come in handy right about now. What had happened to their translator?

The man’s lips leveled into a thin smile. The sight unraveled Wesley. He had the feeling he was being taken for a sucker, and the helplessness over the entire situation washed over him in one swoop.

The man began speaking in rapid Portuguese, and Wesley wished he’d put more effort into learning the language before they left. He ended again by asking where Wesley’s wife was.

For a moment, at a complete loss of what to do, Wesley let his attention fall on the pink tree ahead with its trumpeting blaze of color in the green brush, and on the brightly colored bird that perched in a tree overhead. A young man passed Wesley on a moped; another pair of women carried fish on strings and sacks of fruit.

“Your—wife. Take Ivan.” He pointed to himself, pronouncing the name, E-vahn.

“Wesley,” Wesley said, pointing to himself, deciding there was no point in hiding who he was. This man had told him his name, after all. At the corner, a car veered too close to the side of the street. Wesley reared back, unwittingly stopping to gape at the driver.

The faux pas didn’t seem to bother Ivan whatsoever. Smiling and blinking a few times as he processed Wesley’s words, the man pulled a phone from his pocket and offered it to him. “Here is a phone I found with the hat. Now, take Ivan to your wife.”

“I—where did you get this?” Wesley turned the phone over in his hands, recognizing Hazel’s zebra-striped protective casing. The rage and frustration coiling along his veins steamed like water tossed onto a fire since he’d stepped out of the pawn shop.

“Por favor,” the man said.

That much Wesley understood. Thoughts whirring like twisted cogs, he met the man’s dark eyes and held the gaze, looking—really looking—into his obsidian eyes. Sadness and sorrow lingered there, not threats and torment. The purse had been misplaced, that was all. How elsehadhe come across the hat and Hazel’s phone?

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