Chapter 1 - The Sanctuary Above
I motioned to Mateo, my head of security.
"Escort them to my private elevator.
Clear the top floor."
"Sebastian," Mateo warned in a low murmur, "the board meeting starts in ten minutes."
"Cancel it."
The ride up to the penthouse office was dead silent, save for the hum of the mechanism.
The woman, whose name I soon learned was Clara, held Emma close, her hands trembling against the child's yellow raincoat.
Emma, blissfully unaware of the tension suffocating the adults around her, flipped through her sketchbook, drawing thick black lines across the page.
Once inside my soundproofed office, I poured a glass of water and set it on the glass coffee table before Clara.
"Start from the beginning," I said, leaning against my desk, crossing my arms to hide the slight tremor in my fingers.
"Luca went missing thirteen years ago.
The family searched every corner of the country.
We assumed he was dead."
Clara took a slow, unsteady breath, clutching the glass with both hands.
"He wasn't dead, Sebastian.
At least, not then.
Thirteen years ago, Luca came to my home in Boston.
He was wounded, bleeding out from a gunshot wound in his side.
He begged me not to take him to a hospital, saying his own family's council had ordered the hit."
My blood ran cold.
"The Vale Council?
My uncle Victor?"
"He didn't give me names," Clara whispered, her voice trembling.
"He only said someone inside Vale Global was liquidating the younger lineage to consolidate absolute control over the family's offshore trusts.
He stayed with me for three weeks while I nursed him back to health.
Before he left to go into hiding, he drew the second half of that wolf design on my arm himself.
He said if anything ever happened to him, the twin wolves would lead me to the only man who could protect his legacy."
She looked down at Emma, her eyes swimming with unshed tears.
"Six years ago, Luca came back to me one last time.
We had a brief time together before he was taken for good.
He left me with Emma.
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And a warning: if I ever approached Vale Global before Emma turned six, the people who killed him would erase us too."
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