Chapter 1 - The Purple Dinosaur
"The whole house," Lily clarified without looking up from her purple dinosaur.
Daniel stood completely still in the massive kitchen, unsure of how to speak to a child.
"Yes, I live in the entire house," Daniel answered stiffly.
She finally raised her head and inspected him with large, curious brown eyes.
"My mom says a very important ice man lives here," she stated innocently.
Daniel felt a strange, unfamiliar twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"I suppose I am the ice man," he replied softly.
Before Lily could ask another dangerous question, rapid footsteps echoed down the marble hallway.
Maria rushed into the kitchen with genuine panic written across her pale face.
"Mister Hale, I am so incredibly sorry," she gasped out of breath.
She scooped Lily up into her arms and pressed the child tightly against her chest.
"She woke up and wandered out of our quarters while I was switching the laundry."
Daniel looked at the terrified mother and expected his usual cold irritation to surface.
Instead, he simply picked up the fallen coloring book and handed it gently to the little girl.
"It is perfectly fine, Maria," he said in a remarkably quiet voice.
Maria stared at him as if he had just spoken in a completely foreign language.
She thanked him profusely and hurried back toward the secluded staff wing.
Daniel watched them leave, feeling a sudden, inexplicable ache in his hollow chest.
He returned to his dark study and opened his encrypted laptop to review his daily financial reports.
A secure message from his private corporate investigator suddenly flashed across the dark screen.
The message contained the highly classified background check he had ordered on his new housekeeper.
May you like
Daniel felt his blood run entirely cold as he read the single concluding sentence in the report.
The woman calling herself Maria Torres had legally died in a fiery car crash three years ago.
