Seungri took a sip of his neat whiskey and walked out onto the terrace of the Tokyo high-rise apartment. It was empty, no doubt due to the chill in the air brought on by November’s cooling temperatures.

He’d come late to the holiday party, at the insistence of a business acquaintance who’d told him the host was an investment banker he thought Seungri should meet.

For the past four months, Seungri had very little interest in making money. He’d had little interest in anything, but finding the mother of his child. He was in Tokyo because that was her last known whereabouts. She’d had her things shipped to a Shibuya receiving office and picked them up on the day of their arrival. One day before he had instigated a search for her.

After that, there had been nothing. His investigators had been unable to find a single lead. She’d cancelled her contract with her modelling agency. She’d even closed her credit cards and checking account. No one had seen or heard from Alexandra Kogemi in three months.

Well, that was not strictly true. She’d called the Paris apartment four weeks ago and spoken to Phoebe. Alexandra had hung up without saying why she’d called or answering Phoebe’s questions about where she was. The call had been placed on an untraceable cell phone.

Seungri still cursed whenever he thought of that ill-fated phone call. Would she have told him where she was if he had been there to answer the phone? The sound of voices drifted out onto the almost deserted terrace and he asked himself why he’d bothered to come.

He spun on his heel, intending to go when a woman caught his eye. She had her back to him. Long curling blond hair reached to the center of her back, a back that looked much too familiar. Then she moved, gripping the balcony railing and letting her head fall back as she took a deep breath of air.

“Alexandra!” She spun around to face him and his heart tightened in a painful knot, for although the woman had enough surface resemblance to Alexandra to be her sister, she wasn’t the model. She smiled, even white teeth gleaming in the cool glow of the outdoor lighting.

“Hello. I didn’t realize anyone was out here.”

“I came for the solitude,” he admitted.

Her smile flashed again. “I know what you mean. I adore socializing, but once in a while the crush gets to me and I just need to breathe some air that’s all my own.”

He felt himself smiling for the first time in months. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

She waved her hand. “There’s no need. I don’t mind sharing my little oasis of quiet. You said you knew Alexandra?”

“Yes. I know her.”

“She was an amazing model, wasn’t she? She had just the right combination of innocence and passion to shoot her to supermodel status. It’s too bad she refused to take any Tokyo commissions.”

“She prefers working in Europe.” Something odd passed across the woman’s face.

“Yes, I suppose she did.”

“You keep talking about her in the past tense.” Had Alexandra given up modelling for motherhood?

“That’s because Alexandra Kogemi is gone.” Everything inside him went still.

“What do you mean gone?”

The blonde sighed. “According to my sister, Alexandra Kogemi is dead, if not buried six feet under.”

The words had the effect of multiple body blows and he felt his knees begin to buckle. He reached out blindly for the balcony railing and it was only by sheer force of will that he remained standing.

“She’s dead?”He tried to breathe, but his lungs refused to cooperate. He felt the whiskey glass in his hand break and the sharp pain of one jagged edge pressing into his hand.

“Oh, my word. Are you all right?” The woman’s voice was filled with concern.

“Wait right there. I’ll get something for the cut and to clean up the glass.”

He looked down at the blood beading against the dark skin of his hand and could not connect it to anything he felt because all he felt was numbness.

Alexandra was dead and his baby with her. That thought pounded through his consciousness with the power of an express train pushing away all other considerations.

It could have been minutes or hours later, but the woman returned armed with a first-aid kit and the maid behind her carrying a bowl of water and some small towels.

“Put those down on the table and close the door on your way out,” the woman instructed the maid. She gave Seungri a small smile.

“I don’t want an incident at the party. My husband, doesn’t like scenes.”

“You said Alexandra was dead.” Perhaps he had misheard her.

“Yes.” She bathed his hand and fixed a plaster over the small cut with gentle efficiency.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I forget that others don’t know…” Her voice trailed off and he didn’t press her to continue. He didn’t care if anyone else knew Alexandra had died.

“Was it…” He swallowed. “The baby?”

Her hands stilled in their task of putting the first-aid implements to rights.

“How did you know about the baby?” Her light brown gaze pinned him and her charming air had transformed to one of suspicion.

“She told me.”

“You’re Lee SeungHyun?” The woman spit his name out of as if it were a foul tasting substance.

“Yes.” He didn’t see the blow coming, but he felt it. Her hand landed against the side of his face with enough force to turn his head and make him stagger back a step.

“You filthy pig! I’d like to strangle you with my bare hands. How you have the gall to come here, to my home after the way you treated my sister.”

“What the hell is going on out here?” Another man came storming out onto the terrace. A veritable blond giant.“What have you said to upset my wife?”

“Hunter!” The woman threw herself at her husband.

“It’s Lee SeungHyun. He’s the one. You’ve got to get him out of here. Do something!”

None of the woman’s words or actions had made sense since she’d told Seungri that Harumi was dead, but then how could anything make sense in the face of that devastating fact?

He turned to go, more than willing to abandon the scene. Harumi could hear her sister’s voice raised in agitation from where she sat chatting with one of Hunter’s many business associates in the penthouse’s living room.

She excused herself and stood up. Her sister voice had lowered to the point where Harumi could not make out what her sister was saying, but the urgency was still there.

She walked through the dining room tastefully decorated in autumn colors for the Thanksgiving holiday and out onto the balcony. Her sister was gripping her husband’s biceps and saying something about getting rid of someone.

A bowl of water, tinged pink and a bloodied towel lay on the table to her right and the smell of spilled whiskey permeated the air. A small pile of broken glass lay winking in the outside lights near the outer wall of the terrace.

“Cessie, are you all right?” Harumi’s sister whipped around, her expression horror stricken. She rushed to Harumi and grabbed her wrist.

“Come on.” She started tugging. Harumi resisted simply because she didn’t understand the urgency in her sister’s voice and wanted to know the reason for it. She looked down the length of the balcony to see if she could discover the source of her sister’s agitation and froze.

It Seungri and he was heading in the opposite direction, toward the sliding glass doors leading into Hunter’s study. He stopped at the open doorway and turned.

“I didn’t mean to upset your wife,” he said to Hunter in a voice unlike anything she had ever heard out of Seungri mouth. His gaze flicked over the table she made with her sister pulling frantically against her arm. His eyes appeared unfocused, as if he wasn’t even seeing them.

“I’ll see myself out.”

Then he was gone. Again. He’d walked away from her for the second time without a backward glance. It was no consolation that this time he would have been hard pressed to recognize her.

“I’m sorry, Harumi. I don’t know how he came to be here. Are you going to be all right?” Chessie’s voice buzzed in Harumi ears.

“I slapped him.” Her sister’s words finally registered.

“You what?”

“I slapped him and I called him a pig.” Harumi almost smiled.

“He deserved it.”

“Yes, he did.”

“How did you know who he was?”

“I told him you were dead, I mean Alexandra Kogemi. Anyway, he asked if it was because of the baby and I just knew.”

“You told him Alexandra was dead?”

“Yes, she did, but it’s not true is it? You’re alive.” Seungri’s fury filled voice sent Harumi’s nerves into overdrive. Chessie dropped Harumi wrist in shock.