Chapter 2 - THE MIDNIGHT SURVEILLANCE
Her twelve words echoed in my skull like church bells.
"Your daughter doesn’t need a richer father, sir."
"She needs one who comes home."
I stood in the center of the sitting room.
My tailored Italian suit felt suffocating.
Hannah Mercer didn't flinch.
She picked up the laundry basket and walked past me.
The faint scent of lavender and baby powder drifted in her wake.
No one had ever spoken to Damian Cross like that.
I had put rival capos six feet under for less.
My jaw clenched until my back molars groaned.
I walked down the dark corridor toward my private study.
I locked the heavy mahogany door behind me.
I picked up the secure satellite phone on my desk.
"Dominic," I said.
My head of security answered on the first ring.
"Boss?"
"Run Hannah Mercer again."
A brief silence hung on the line.
"We already vetted her, sir. Clean record. Zero criminal history."
"Run her deeper," I growled, staring out at the rain-lashed estate grounds.
"Check bank transfers, offshore relatives, medical licenses, burner phones."
"If she sneezed in kindergarten, I want the date."
"Understood, boss."
I hung up and pulled up the live security feed.
Camera four: Nursery.
Claire and Chloe slept under pale blue blankets, breathing in soft synchronization.
Camera seven: Hallway.
Hannah walked toward the staff quarters on the west wing.
She was twenty-four, slender, and moved with silent, graceful steps.
Too silent.
A normal maid dragged her heels when exhausted.
Hannah walked like a ghost avoiding tripwires.
She entered her bedroom.
I switched to the hidden camera behind the bookshelf in her room.
She set down the basket.
She didn't turn on the lamp.
She moved directly to the window, pulling back the velvet curtain by an inch.
Her eyes scanned the dark tree line of my sixty-acre Westchester estate.
She pulled a silver chain from under her collar.
Attached to the chain was an engraved silver locket.
She pressed it against her lips, her shoulders trembling with silent, jagged sobs.
Then she opened the locket.
The night-vision lens zoomed in on the miniature photograph inside.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
It wasn't a picture of an old lover.
It was a picture of my late wife, Elena.
Holding newborn twins in an intensive care incubator.
Beneath the photograph was an inscription etched in blood-red ink:
Forgive me, Elena.
My blood ran cold as ice.
Hannah Mercer hadn't answered an agency ad by coincidence.
She had infiltrated my home with a purpose.
Before I could draw my gun and confront her, the estate perimeter alarm flashed red.
May you like
A silenced gunshot shattered the glass of the greenhouse below.
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