Chapter 1 - The Echo of a GhostThe music box finished its rotation with a faint, metallic click that echoed loudly in the quiet nursery. Grant Mercer stared down at Nora Ellis, his mind racing through impossible permutations.
"Who told you that song?" Grant’s voice dropped into a low, dangerous register, the tone that had made boardrooms tremble across Manhattan. He didn't drop the box, his fingers curling instinctively around its dented silver corner.
Nora didn't flinch, though her shoulders tightened beneath her stiff service uniform. Her dark eyes, clear and unnervingly calm, shifted from the box to Grant's face. "Nobody told me, Mr. Mercer. I didn't learn it from a recording or a sheet of music. I learned it from a woman who sat on a cold floor in a safehouse six hundred miles away, holding this exact tune in her head because it was the only thing she had left of her husband and her child."
Sophie watched them both, her little brow furrowed in confusion. "Are you going to fire her, Dad? Don't fire her. She makes the cocoa just like Mommy used to."
Grant felt as though the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. A safehouse? Mara hadn't run away. For five years, he had tortured himself with the ghosts of abandonment, wondering what fault of his had driven her into the dark. If she had been hidden—or taken—everything he built, every security protocol, every billion-dollar asset he owned was a monument to a lie.
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"Stand up," Grant commanded, his voice trembling despite his best efforts.
Nora rose slowly, smoothing down her apron. "If you want answers, Mr. Mercer, you need to lock the door, turn off your phone, and stop looking at me like I'm an intruder. Because the people who took your wife five years ago don't know I'm here yet—but the moment they realize the box moved, they will."
