Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Master SuiteThe penthouse suite of the Hail Tower sat sixty floors above the city, a sterile fortress of glass, steel, and minimalist art. It was a place designed to keep the world out, yet tonight, it held two intruders who carried the smell of rain, dumpster ash, and old street dust into its pristine corridors.
Dr. Aris Vance, the family’s private physician, packed his silver-rimmed stethoscope back into its leather case and stood up from the massive leather sofa in the master study. His face was grave.
"Severe malnutrition, Mr. Hail," Vance said, wiping his glasses with a silk handkerchief. "The boy—Leo—is suffering from late-stage hypothermia and acute starvation. His organs were beginning to shut down. Another six hours on the street and..." He left the sentence unfinished, though the heavy silence filled in the blank. "As for the girl, Maya, she’s exhausted, bruised from physical labor, and shows signs of chronic dehydration. They need professional pediatric care, not a billionaire's whim."
"Are they going to live?" Victor asked. He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the red and white streaks of traffic crawling through the freezing November drizzle far below.
"Yes. Thanks to the warm intravenous fluids and the glucose drip I administered. They’re sleeping now. Deeply." Vance hesitated, adjusting his cuffs. "Victor... what are your plans? You can’t keep two street children in a corporate mausoleum. Child services—"
"Child services will put them in the system," Victor interrupted, his voice flat. "A system that loses thousands of children a year to trafficking, abuse, and neglect. The same system that failed Eliza’s sister when we were younger."
Vance sighed. "This isn’t about Eliza."
"Everything is about Eliza," Victor said, turning around slowly. The amber light from the city caught the hard lines of his jaw. "Get out, Aris. Send a nurse at 6:00 AM. And don't leak this to the press. If the tabloids get hold of the fact that I brought two street kids into my home, the stock holders will panic."
"And your board?"
"Let them panic."
After the doctor left, Victor walked down the long, dimly lit hallway toward the east wing. He stopped outside the heavy oak door of the guest suite—a room that had remained locked since the funeral.
Inside, Maya and Leo were sleeping in a king-sized bed that swallowed them whole. Leo looked like a doll tossed onto a snowdrift, his chest rising and falling in steady, shallow rhythms beneath a heavy goose-down duvet.
Maya lay beside him, her small hand firmly gripping the boy’s sleeve, as if even in sleep she feared someone would reach out and tear them apart.
Victor stepped into the room, his footsteps completely silent on the custom walnut flooring. He stopped beside the bed and looked down at Maya’s face. In the dim light of the nightstand, without the grime and rain, her features looked achingly familiar.
Not because she looked like Eliza.
She looked like Olivia.
The same stubborn curve of the jaw. The same dark, unruly curls plastered against her forehead.
Victor felt a sharp, violent wrench in his chest—a physical spasm of grief so intense it forced the air from his lungs. He gripped the edge of the mattress, his knuckles turning white. For a second, the room spun. He reached out his hand, trembling, wanting to brush the hair away from Maya's forehead.
Just as his fingertips brushed her skin, Maya’s eyes snapped open.
May you like
There was no sleep in them. They were wide, clear, and hard as flint. In a fraction of a second, before Victor could pull back, her small hand shot out from under the blanket, fingers curling like claws around a heavy bronze reading lamp on the bedside table.
"Get away from him!" she screamed, her voice cracking with pure, feral panic as she swung the heavy metal base straight at his head.
