Chapter 2 - BLOOD ON THE GLASS
For several seconds, I stared at Claire without understanding the words.
“Blood?”
She nodded.
“On the revolving door. One of the security guards found more near the service entrance.”
I looked at Liam and Lucas.
Both boys had stopped eating.
Liam’s little hand tightened around his plastic fork.
Lucas whispered, “Mommy got hurt.”
I crossed the office and crouched in front of them.
“How do you know that?”
Lucas immediately looked at his brother.
Liam swallowed.
“We were hiding.”
“Where?”
“In a car.”
Every instinct I had developed over fifteen years of hostile acquisitions told me to move quickly and reveal nothing.
I stood.
“Claire, lock this floor down. Nobody comes up without my approval. Tell security I want every camera recording from midnight until now.”
She hesitated.
“And the police?”
“Call them. But nobody removes these boys from this office until I understand what happened.”
Ten minutes later, my conference room looked like a command center.
Security footage covered six monitors.
I stood behind my security director, Marcus Cole, while he rewound the lobby feed to 5:14 that morning.
Rain covered the street outside Emerald Tower.
Then a woman appeared.
My breath stopped.
Emma.
Five years had changed her.
Her dark hair was shorter. Her face was thinner. She wore jeans, a gray coat, and white sneakers instead of the polished dresses I remembered.
But I knew the way she moved.
I knew the slight tilt of her head when she was checking behind her.
She held one twin with each hand.
They were running.
“Slow it down,” I ordered.
Marcus did.
Emma kept looking toward the street.
A black SUV stopped at the curb.
Its headlights remained on.
Emma pulled the boys through the doors.
Then she turned.
Someone stepped out of the SUV.
The camera angle caught only part of him.
Male.
Tall.
Dark coat.
Emma shoved Liam and Lucas toward a security desk that was unoccupied because the overnight guard had been responding to a maintenance alarm.
She crouched in front of the twins.
Even without sound, I could read her lips.
Find Daddy.
Then she stood and ran toward the service corridor.
The man followed.
The next camera showed Emma reaching the emergency exit.
She stumbled.
Her palm struck the glass.
When she pulled away, blood remained behind.
Then she disappeared into the stairwell.
The man entered six seconds later.
No camera recorded what happened after that.
“Where does that stairwell go?” I asked.
“Parking garage, loading dock, mechanical levels.”
“Check all of them.”
“We already are.”
I turned toward the office.
Liam was standing at the conference-room door.
He had heard everything.
I immediately softened my voice.
“Buddy, you should stay with your brother.”
“Did the bad man take Mommy?”
Every adult in the room went silent.
I walked toward him.
“I don’t know.”
He nodded with the grave expression of someone much older than four.
“Mommy said you would know what to do.”
That sentence nearly broke me.
Five years ago, Emma had believed the opposite.
We met when Miller Meridian was barely more than twenty employees working out of two rented floors downtown.
Emma Reed had been a financial analyst at another firm.
She was smart enough to argue with me, stubborn enough not to be impressed by my money, and warm enough to make me believe life might contain something beyond winning.
Then investors offered me the deal that changed everything.
It required eighteen months overseas.
Emma asked me not to go.
Not because she wanted to control me.
Because she wanted us to build a life.
I chose the company.
I told myself love could wait.
Emma told me some things disappeared when you treated them like they would always be there.
She was right.
I left.
She stopped answering.
And I convinced myself that was what I deserved.
Now two four-year-old boys with my eyes were sitting inside my office.
My phone rang.
Marcus answered his.
His expression changed.
“They found something.”
We went to the garage.
Near a concrete column on level three sat Emma’s cracked phone.
Beside it was a smear of blood.
No Emma.
No attacker.
No vehicle.
The garage exit camera had conveniently gone offline for eleven minutes.
“That wasn’t an accident,” Marcus said.
“No.”
Someone knew my building.
That realization settled like ice inside me.
I returned upstairs to find a pediatric doctor examining the twins at my request.
Both were healthy except for exhaustion and mild dehydration.
When the doctor left, I sat beside them on the couch.
Lucas had fallen asleep again.
Liam remained awake.
“Did your mother tell you anything else?”
He nodded.
“She said if she went away, we should give you the backpack.”
I looked at the small backpack Lucas had been clutching.
“Can I see it?”
Liam thought about it before gently pulling the bag toward himself.
“Mommy said only Daddy.”
“I am your dad,” I said.
The words came out before I could stop them.
Liam studied my face.
Then he placed the backpack in my hands.
Inside were two changes of clothes, toothbrushes, a stuffed dinosaur, several granola bars, birth certificates, and an envelope with my name.
My hands trembled when I opened it.
Jason,
If you are reading this, then I failed to keep them safe.
Liam and Lucas are your sons.
I tried to tell you when I found out I was pregnant. I tried more than once.
Someone made sure you never received those messages.
I spent years believing you chose silence.
Maybe you did.
Maybe you didn’t.
I no longer know.
But there is something happening inside Miller Meridian that is bigger than either of us.
I found records I was never supposed to see.
People have already been hurt.
If anything happens to me, protect the boys.
And do not trust anyone who tells you this is about money.
It is about what your company has been hiding.
My pulse hammered.
There was one final line.
Whatever you do, Jason, do not tell your father where the boys are.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
My father, Thomas Miller, had founded the original company whose assets allowed me to build Miller Meridian.
He was seventy-one now, officially retired, but still controlled enough voting shares to destroy any decision I made.
He had also hated Emma.
Too emotional, he used to call her.
Too ordinary.
A distraction.
My phone vibrated.
The name on the screen made every muscle in my body tighten.
DAD.
I answered.
“Jason,” my father said.
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
“I just heard there was some trouble at your building.”
I looked through the glass wall toward Liam and Lucas.
“How?”
A pause.
“People call me.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Another pause.
Then he said something that made my blood run cold.
May you like
“Where are the boys?”
I had never told him there were boys.
