Chapter 1 - The Hidden Room
Sixty million dollars had just changed hands when a baby crawled beneath my desk and exposed the secret my own brother had taken to his grave.
Everyone believed Julian Caruso had died eighteen months earlier.
But when that little girl looked up at me with his unmistakable gray eyes, I realized someone had been hiding his child inside my own house.
I stared down at her, completely unable to move.
She could not have been more than nine months old.
She wore a faded yellow onesie and one white sock.
She showed absolutely no fear whatsoever.
"Where did you come from?" I whispered.
She smiled warmly and raised both of her tiny arms.
No one entered my private office without explicit permission.
Armed guards knocked respectfully.
Expensive corporate lawyers waited outside in the hallway.
Even Vincent, who had worked as my head of security for thirty years, knew better than to cross that doorway uninvited.
Yet this baby had simply crawled right in.
I lifted her awkwardly into my arms.
She grabbed my silk tie, pressed a tiny palm against my chest, and rested her head against me as though she had done it a hundred times before.
Then I saw the silver chain resting around her little neck.
My heart stopped completely in my chest.
It was a Saint Christopher medal.
I gently turned the cold silver over in my fingers.
There, scratched deeply into the metal, was a crooked letter J.
I had carved that exact letter myself when I was sixteen years old.
The medal belonged to Julian.
"Always come home," I had told my little brother when I gave it to him.
He wore it faithfully for twenty-three years.
Frantic footsteps rushed down the marble hallway outside my office.
Hannah Reed, one of my newest maids, appeared breathlessly in the doorway.
The second she saw the child safely in my arms, her face went completely white.
"Mr. Caruso, please," she begged softly.
I held up the silver medal so she could see it clearly.
"Whose is this?" I demanded.
Her eyes filled with absolute panic.
"It belongs to my daughter," Hannah answered.
"That is not what I asked you," I replied coldly.
Hannah's hands trembled violently as she explained her situation.
She said her babysitter had been hospitalized eleven days earlier.
The local daycare wanted money she did not have, so she had secretly been bringing her daughter, Grace, to work.
I barely heard her excuses.
"Who gave you this specific medal?" I asked again.
There was a long, suffocating silence in the room.
Then she whispered that her father gave it to her.
"Give me his name," I ordered.
"I knew him as Evan Cole," Hannah said.
Grace curled her tiny fingers tightly around my expensive shirt.
Hannah looked at me with heavy tears gathering in her eyes.
"Before he died, he told me his real name was Julian Caruso," she confessed.
For a terrifying moment, the entire room disappeared from my vision.
"My brother?" I choked out.
She nodded slowly.
"He said hiding who he was was the only way he could keep us safe," Hannah explained.
I looked down at Grace again.
She had those piercing gray eyes.
She had that faint gold ring around the iris.
She was undoubtedly Julian's child.
"How old is she?" I asked.
"She is nine months and twelve days old," Hannah replied.
The dates collided violently in my head.
Julian had died eight months before she was even born.
"Did he know about the baby?" I asked softly.
"Yes, he knew," Hannah said, touching the baby's faded yellow onesie.
"He bought that the night I told him I was pregnant."
"It was the first thing he ever bought for his daughter."
Suddenly, that cheap piece of fabric felt immensely more valuable than the sixty-million-dollar deal sitting unsigned on my desk.
I had buried my brother believing I had lost the absolute last of my family.
All this time, part of him had been living right under my roof.
I looked directly at Hannah.
Only one question mattered to me now.
"Where have you been keeping my niece?" I asked firmly.
Hannah swallowed hard and gestured toward the staff quarters in the east wing.
I stood up, carrying Grace, and followed Hannah down the long, silent corridor.
We reached her small bedroom at the end of the hall.
Hannah pushed the wooden door open, and she immediately let out a horrified scream.
May you like
The room had been completely ransacked, the mattress slashed open, and Grace's crib smashed to pieces.
Nailed to the center of the wall with a bloody hunting knife was a pristine white envelope bearing my name.
