Chapter 2 - The Child Who Shouldn’t Exist
Lucas did not open the front door.
He pressed a concealed button beneath his desk.
Steel shutters slid over the study windows. The mansion’s exterior lights went dark, leaving only the crystal chandelier glowing above them.
“Lock down the east wing,” Lucas ordered.
Harold reached for his radio.
Lucas caught his wrist again.
“Not you.”
Harold’s expression tightened.
“I’ve protected this house for twelve years.”
“And she knew where to find it.”
Lucas looked down at Emma.
“Who gave you this address?”
“My mom.”
“Where is she?”
Emma stared at the wet marble beneath her shoes.
“She told me not to say.”
Lucas lowered himself until they were eye to eye.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Emma’s lips trembled.
“That’s what the other man said.”
Lucas’s jaw hardened.
“What other man?”
“The man who came to our apartment. He wore a black ring.”
Harold’s left hand moved behind his back.
A subtle motion.
Almost invisible.
Lucas saw it.
On Harold’s smallest finger sat a thick black signet ring.
The same ring worn by senior members of Blackwood Security.
Emma noticed Lucas looking.
Her eyes widened.
She stepped behind him.
Harold slowly removed his hand from view.
“That ring is standard issue,” he said. “Half the organization wears one.”
“Not anymore,” Lucas replied.
Six years earlier, Lucas had ordered every black ring destroyed after Evelyn’s supposed death. Only the highest-ranking men had kept theirs privately.
Harold had told him the rings were sentimental.
Lucas had believed him.
Another knock shook the front entrance.
Then the mansion intercom crackled.
A distorted male voice filled the study.
“Send out the girl, Blackwood.”
Emma buried her face against Lucas’s back.
Lucas stared at the speaker.
Nobody outside should have known she was in the study.
Nobody except the three people inside it.
Harold’s face remained controlled.
But a single drop of sweat rolled from his temple.
Lucas calmly picked up the intercom.
“You have ten seconds to leave my property.”
The voice laughed.
“She belongs to us.”
Lucas looked at Emma.
She was gripping the résumé so tightly that a second folded object slipped from inside it and landed silently on the floor.
A small photograph.
Harold saw it first.
May you like
And his calm expression finally cracked.
👉 The photograph beneath Emma’s résumé showed Lucas beside a woman everyone believed had died—and Harold looked terrified that Emma had brought it.
