Chapter 1
At 12:03 a.m., three knocks hit my bedroom door—and inside my heavily guarded estate north of Chicago, that should have been impossible. When I opened it, a barefoot three-year-old girl stood there hugging a battered stuffed rabbit, then whispered, “Mr. Adrian, the bad man found us.”
Midnight knocks in my world usually meant betrayal, blood, or death. But Lily Bennett’s tear-streaked face, crooked flowered nightgown, missing sock, and trembling lower lip terrified me more than any armed man ever had.
Her mother, Claire Bennett, had worked as a housemaid on my estate for eight months, living with Lily in the employee apartments in the east wing. I had spoken to the little girl maybe six times, yet somehow she had crossed a dark mansion alone to find me.
“I need your help,” she whispered.
My name is Adrian Moretti, and at thirty-nine, I controlled shipping contracts, warehouses, restaurants, waterfront property, and enough of Chicago’s business world that people lowered their voices when they mentioned me. My father had built an empire where loyalty and fear were often the same currency, and although I had spent years cleaning up what I inherited, nobody had ever mistaken me for gentle.
I looked down at Lily. “What happened?”
“You’re too tall.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you when you’re all the way up there.”
Men in Chicago would have paid to see me kneel on the marble floor for a three-year-old. “Better?”
She nodded, then squeezed her rabbit tighter. “My mommy won’t wake up.”
Every other thought disappeared. “Where is she?”
“In our room. She said her head hurt, and then something went bang. I shook her and said Mommy lots and lots of times, but she wouldn’t wake up.”
I started to rise, but Lily grabbed two of my fingers.
“Wait. There’s something else.”
Her eyes slid toward the dark hallway. “The bad man found us.”
Every instinct I had sharpened instantly. “What bad man?”
“The one Mommy said I never go with.”
“Do you know his name?”
“I’m not supposed to say.”
“Tonight you can.”
She leaned close enough to whisper directly into my ear.
“Victor Kane.”
For half a second, breathing became impossible.
Three days earlier, Victor Kane—a developer, attorney, financier, and longtime associate of my father—had sat across from me downtown and lied about why he desperately wanted three aging warehouses on Bennett Street. I had known he was hiding something; I just hadn’t known that something might be connected to Claire and her daughter.
Lily led me to their apartment, where a shattered ceramic cup lay across the floor and Claire was unconscious beside the dresser. Her pulse was fast, her skin cold, and sweat covered her forehead.
I called Daniel Russo immediately. “Lock the property. Nobody leaves, and nobody enters.”
Seventeen minutes later, Dr. Michael Grant was examining Claire while Lily watched from Mrs. Alvarez’s arms. After fluids, Claire’s color slowly improved, but Michael’s expression didn’t.
He pulled me into the hallway. “She’s severely dehydrated. Exhausted. Her blood pressure crashed.”
“What caused it?”
“Stress, overwork… possibly something else.”
His hesitation turned my fear into anger. “What?”
Michael lowered his voice.
“There’s evidence Claire took a sedative.”
May you like
My eyes went back to the shattered cup inside the room.
“What sedative?”
