Chapter 2 - Whispers in the Dark
The temperature in the grand dining room plummeted so fast it felt as though the air conditioning had broken down. The two guards at the doors stepped half an inch inside, their hands hovering over their weapons, waiting for the single word that would signal a summary execution of employment—or worse. Grace dropped to her knees on the marble floor, her palms flat against the cold stone, tears instantly spilling over her lower eyelids.
"Mr. Hale, I swear on my life, I never gossiped about your family!" Grace sobbed, her voice trembling so violently she could barely form the words. "I swear it! When I was hired a year ago, the agency director gave me a strict warning: never mention the past, never ask about the accident, and treat this house like a tomb of secrets. I kept my mouth shut!"
Julian stared down at her, his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle feathered in his cheek. He knew Grace was telling the truth; her terror was too raw, too genuine to be an act. But that realization only deepened the mystery. If Grace hadn't told her daughter, and if no one inside this fortress of an estate dared utter Chloe’s name, how did a three-year-old child sitting across from him know about a dead little girl?
"Then how does she know?" Julian demanded, his voice dropping to a low, menacing growl that made Amara pause mid-chew on her dinner roll.
Amara blinked her large, dark eyes, looking back and forth between her weeping mother and the terrifying man at the head of the table. She didn't sense malice; she only sensed confusion. She wiped a crumb from her chin with the back of her small hand and pointed a sticky finger straight at Julian’s chest.
"The lady in the picture told me," Amara said casually, as if she were talking about a cartoon character on television.
Julian froze. The room seemed to spin on its axis. "What did you say?"
"The lady in the gold frame upstairs," Amara babbled on, kicking her short legs against the oversized chair. "In the dark room where the big bed is. She wears a white dress and has hair like yours. She sits on the window sill when the moon is bright and sings quiet songs. Yesterday, when Mommy was downstairs cleaning the kitchen, I went upstairs to find my lost crayon. I saw her sitting there. She looked at me and whispered that her daddy was very lonely down here, and that I should come keep him company because he misses his little girl."
Grace let out a choked cry, pressing her forehead against the marble floor. "Mr. Hale, please forgive her! She has an overactive imagination—kids see things in the shadows, she watches too many cartoons—I'll keep her locked in the quarters, I swear to God—"
Julian didn't hear Grace’s apologies. His ears were ringing. He stood up so abruptly his heavy mahogany chair tipped backward and crashed loudly against the floor. The guards flinched, drawing their handguns halfway before Julian threw his hand up to stop them.
The room was dead silent, save for the soft, rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner.
The room Amara was describing—the master suite on the third floor, locked from the inside, untouched since the night of the crash. The room where Elena and Chloe used to sleep. No one had entered that room in two years. The key was in Julian’s private wall safe, wrapped in black velvet. The windows were bolted shut from the inside, overlooking a sheer three-hundred-foot drop into the jagged rocks of the coastal cliff below.
"You went into the west wing master suite?" Julian asked, his voice shaking—a sound no living soul had ever heard come from the lips of the underworld boss.
Amara nodded innocently, taking another bite of her roll. "Mhm. The door wasn't locked. It opened right up."
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Julian’s blood ran cold. The door was never unlocked. He checked it personally every single Sunday.
He didn't wait another second. He strode past the frozen guards, his long legs eating up the marble hallway toward the grand staircase. He took the steps three at a time, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal. Behind him, he could hear Grace scrambling to her feet, begging for mercy, while Amara’s small footsteps pattered behind them all, humming a strange, unfamiliar tune that sounded hauntingly like a lullaby Chloe used to hum when she was two years old.
