Chapter 1: The Crest on the Collar
"I said, let her go," Daniel repeated. His voice was no longer the broken, trembling whisper of a grieving son. It was low, sharp, and laced with a dangerous authority that demanded obedience.
The man in the white shirt didn't let go. Instead, his cold, practiced expression shifted into an artificially polite smile. He looked Daniel up and down, clearly dismissing him as just another clueless bystander.
"I apologize for the disturbance, sir," the man said smoothly, his grip tightening so hard on the young woman's shoulder that she let out a quiet whimper. "She is a severely disturbed patient who wandered away from our private care facility. She suffers from intense delusions. I’m just taking her back to her doctors."
The young woman shook her head frantically, tears spilling down her dirty cheeks. "No! He's lying! Please, he's going to hurt me!"
Daniel took a step closer, his eyes narrowing. As the man reached into his pocket to pull out a radio, Daniel saw it. Stitched meticulously onto the collar of the man’s pristine white shirt was a small, silver emblem: a falcon with its wings spread.
Daniel’s blood turned to ice.
It was the exact same emblem stamped on the watermark of the hidden letters he had found in his father’s locked desk drawer just hours ago. The letters that detailed monthly payments to an off-the-books psychiatric facility.
"She’s not going anywhere with you," Daniel said, stepping directly into the man’s personal space.
"Sir, step back before I call the police," the man warned, dropping the polite act.
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"Call them," Daniel challenged, his voice echoing like thunder across the empty park. "Call them right now. And when they get here, tell them you just assaulted Daniel Reed, the heir to Reed Enterprises, the company that signs your paycheck."
The man’s arrogant smirk instantly vanished. His eyes widened in sudden, absolute terror. In that brief second of hesitation, Daniel violently shoved the man backward, grabbed the young woman’s trembling hand, and sprinted toward his parked car.
