Chapter 2: The Ghost of the Firstborn
The silver cross gleamed under the harsh hallway lights, blinding me.
I knew that bracelet. I knew it because for the last three years, I had watched Harper stare at empty space, tracing the phantom lines of that exact heirloom on her own wrist. It was the only piece of her past she had ever admitted to losing.
I looked from the boy's wrist to Harper’s ghostly pale face. She looked like she had just been handed a death sentence.
"Harper," I growled, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. The rage hadn't left me; it had just mutated into something far more dangerous. "What is that on his wrist?"
"Julian, I..." She choked on her own breath, her hand flying to the diamond necklace at her throat. "It's not what you think."
"Don't lie to me!" I roared, the sound echoing off the stone walls. I stepped closer, cornering her against the wall, my shadow completely swallowing her thin frame. "That boy was found wandering the edge of my estate two weeks ago. My staff took him in. And you just locked him in a room. Why are you terrified of a child?"
Harper closed her eyes, a heavy sob tearing from her chest. "Because he shouldn't be alive, Julian! He was taken! They told me he was dead!"
The maid gasped, holding Leo tighter. The boy had stopped crying, his wide, dark eyes staring at Harper with a strange, haunting familiarity. Eyes that looked exactly like the woman standing in front of me.
My mind spun into a dark, chaotic abyss. The puzzle pieces were slamming together, creating a picture that made my blood run entirely cold. Seven years ago, before Harper ever met me, her family had been ruined by a rival syndicate. Rumor was, she had a child out of wedlock, a child that vanished to clean up the family name before she was sold off to the highest bidder.
Me.
"You lied to me," I whispered, the betrayal cutting deeper than any blade. "You let me believe you were broken by the past, but you were just hiding the evidence."
Suddenly, the heavy iron doors at the end of the corridor burst open.
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Four men in tactical gear, carrying suppressed rifles, stepped into the hallway. They didn't wear my family's crest. They wore the sigil of the ghost syndicate—the one that had supposedly died out years ago.
The leader leveled his rifle directly at the little boy. "Hand over the asset, Mr. Vance. The mother already failed to hide him. Don't make the same mistake."
