Chapter 1 - The Locket
The elevator doors to Eleanor’s penthouse glided shut, sealing her in a vault of silence. The city of Manhattan sparkled below her floor-to-ceiling windows like scattered diamonds on black velvet, but she didn’t spare it a glance. She moved with mechanical precision toward the massive marble kitchen island, placing the delicate pastry box in the center.
This was her ritual. Seven years. Seven red velvet cupcakes. Seven times she had stood in this cavernous, empty apartment and sung a silent song to a ghost.
Eleanor untied the gold ribbon with trembling fingers. She lifted the lid, bracing herself for the familiar sight of the crimson cake and the silver candles.
Instead, she froze.
The breath was punched from her lungs. There was no cupcake. Sitting on a pristine white napkin was a small, tarnished silver locket shaped like a star.
Eleanor’s knees buckled. She slammed a hand against the cool marble to keep from collapsing. It was Leo’s locket. The one she had given him for his seventh birthday, just three days before he vanished from his school playground. The police had scoured the city, dragged the rivers, and interrogated hundreds, but they never found the boy. And they never found the locket.
With a shaking hand, she reached into the box. Beneath the tarnished silver star lay a small, heavy piece of parchment. Typed in crisp, black ink was a single sentence:
He’s still alive, Eleanor, but time is running out.
For five years, the authorities had told her Leo was gone. Her therapists had medicated her into numbness. Her board of directors had politely ignored her hollow eyes. They were all wrong.
Eleanor didn’t cry. The suffocating ache in her throat evaporated, replaced by something she hadn't felt in nearly a decade. Pure, unadulterated rage.
She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out her phone, and bypassed her contacts list. She dialed a number that wasn't saved, a number she had sworn to use only if the world was ending.
May you like
"Vance," a gravelly voice answered on the second ring.
"Jax," Eleanor said, her voice dropping an octave, stripping away the polished CEO and revealing the desperate mother beneath. "They made a mistake. They made contact. I need you at my penthouse. Now."
