Chapter 2 - The Silent Alarm
The silver locket felt unbearably heavy in my palm.
Five years ago, I had convinced myself that Emma was a distraction. I was a man obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder, convinced that love was a vulnerability I couldn't afford. I walked away from the only woman who had ever looked at me and seen a man instead of a bank account. I didn't know she was pregnant. I didn't know I had left her to raise two boys entirely on her own.
And now, she was gone.
"Liam," I said, my voice dropping to a gentle, steady register I didn't know I possessed. "Who took your mother?"
Liam’s small hands gripped the edge of his dinosaur sweatshirt. "Men in dark suits. They came to our apartment last night. Mommy woke us up and took us down the fire escape. She gave us to Mrs. Higgins from down the hall and told her to put us in a cab to your building."
"Did the men say what they wanted?" I asked, my blood turning to liquid ice.
"They wanted a flash drive," Lucas whispered, speaking for the first time. "Mommy told them she didn't have it. But she did. She hid it in my backpack."
Lucas unzipped the small front pocket of his bag and pulled out a standard, black USB drive.
I took the drive and immediately plugged it into my executive terminal. It took less than thirty seconds for my decryption software to bypass the basic security lock. When the files flooded my screen, the breath completely left my lungs.
They were offshore financial ledgers. Embezzlement records. Extortion receipts.
Emma hadn't just been struggling to survive. She had been working as a forensic accountant for Thorne Capital, one of the most corrupt, vicious hedge funds in New York. Victor Thorne was a man who masqueraded as a legitimate venture capitalist while laundering millions for the Russian syndicate. Emma had found the missing money, and she had stolen the proof.
She knew Thorne would kill her. So she sent the evidence, and our sons, to the only man in Manhattan powerful enough to stop him.
Me.
I picked up my desk phone and dialed my head of private security.
"Marcus," I said, my voice vibrating with a lethal, absolute authority. "Lock down my office. No one enters or leaves without my authorization. Put a six-man detail on my sons."
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"Understood, Mr. Miller," Marcus replied instantly. "And you?"
"Get the armored SUVs ready," I commanded, my eyes hardening into dark steel. "We are going to Thorne Capital. And we are going to tear it down to the studs."
