Chapter 1 - The Red Pulse in the StitchingThe synthetic fluff hissed as it spilled across the cream-colored sheets, tainted with a greasy, industrial gray at the core.
Rory Starks stood frozen, one arm locked around Rose while Lily buried her tear-soaked face into his shoulder. The air in the nursery felt suddenly thin, sucked dry by the revelation spilling from the toy's ripped spine.
There it was.
Buried deep within the plush belly, nestled inside a custom-molded cavity of hard black resin, a tiny circular diode blinked.
Red. Blink. Red. Blink.
It was a custom-built, sub-miniature transmitter, wired directly into a modified digital recorder the size of a matchbox. A live audio-visual relay.
Veronica didn't hesitate. With her thumb and forefinger, she pinched the cold metal casing of the device and ripped it free from the internal wiring. A faint, high-pitched squeal—like feedback trapped inside a tunnel—died instantly in her palm.
"It's a bug," Veronica said, her voice terrifyingly calm in the echoing silence of the room. "Not just a tracker. A two-way comms unit with a remote frequency synthesizer. Someone wasn't just listening to them sleep, Mr. Starks... someone was talking to them."
Rory’s face drained of every trace of color, leaving only the harsh, dark maps of his tattoos standing out against his skin like ink on bone. His eyes dropped to the broken toy, then slowly lifted to meet Veronica's. The ruthless mob boss, the man who controlled every dock, union, and syndicate from Montauk to Manhattan, looked entirely hollowed out.
"Who?" Rory whispered, his voice dangerously low.
"Look at the stitching on the back seam," Veronica said, tilting the bear toward the dim night-light. "Double-threaded industrial nylon. Hand-finished with a tailors' knot. You don't get that from a factory in Belgium, Mr. Starks. You get that from someone who sits in a high-rise tailoring suite on Fifth Avenue—or someone inside this very house."
Lily stopped crying. She lifted her head, her small fingers trembling as she pointed a shaking hand at the ruined toy.
"Aunt Susan said... Aunt Susan said if we took the bear off the bed, the bad man in the wall would come take Daddy's heart away," Lily whimpered.
Rory’s jaw snapped shut with a sound like a pistol cocking.
Susan Thompson.
May you like
His late wife’s sister. The sweet, grieving aunt who brought custom gifts every Tuesday, who poured the tea, who volunteered to manage the estate’s domestic accounts after her sister’s mysterious "accident" two years ago.
"Veronica," Rory said, his voice dropping into an arctic register that made the hairs on the back of the maid's neck stand up. "Lock the nursery doors. Don't let anyone in or out. I'm going to pay my dear sister-in-law a very late visit."
