Chapter 2 - The Yellow Room
Adrian did not panic.
Panic was what people did when they believed they had no choices left.
Adrian had spent his entire adult life creating choices.
He turned sharply onto an industrial access road.
The black SUVs followed.
Grace grabbed the door handle.
“They found us.”
“Not yet.”
Adrian pressed a button beneath the steering column.
A hidden panel illuminated.
Grace stared as he entered a six-digit code.
Thirty seconds later, headlights appeared at the opposite end of the road.
Two armored Vale Security vehicles blocked the intersection.
The pursuing SUVs slowed.
Adrian accelerated through the gap.
The armored vehicles closed behind him.
Grace stared.
“Whose men are those?”
“Mine.”
“Marcus controls your security.”
“Marcus controls the security he knows about.”
Adrian had learned long ago that no man survived by keeping only one set of keys.
Twenty minutes later, they entered an underground garage beneath an old brick warehouse on the western edge of Chicago.
Grace looked confused.
The building appeared abandoned.
Inside was something very different.
Steel doors.
Security cameras.
Medical equipment.
Sleeping quarters.
And six men Adrian trusted because Marcus had never met them.
Adrian carried Emma while Grace led them upstairs.
The yellow room was on the second floor.
Grace stopped outside the door.
Her hand trembled on the knob.
“I need you to understand something.”
Adrian looked at her.
“What?”
“She doesn’t know you.”
The words hurt more than any bullet ever had.
Grace continued carefully.
“She knows your photograph.”
“She knows your name.”
“But she knows me as the person who feeds her when she wakes up.”
“She knows Emma as her sister.”
“You cannot expect her to understand what happened.”
Adrian lowered his eyes.
“I don’t.”
Grace opened the door.
The room was small.
Warm yellow walls surrounded a wooden crib.
Paper stars hung above it.
A stuffed elephant sat beside a folded pink blanket.
And in the middle of the crib stood a dark-haired little girl holding the rail.
Adrian stopped breathing.
Lily stared at him.
Eight months old.
Round cheeks.
Large gray-blue eyes.
Evelyn’s eyes.
Adrian had spent months trying to remember exactly how Evelyn’s eyes looked in morning light.
Now they were staring directly at him from his daughter’s face.
Lily blinked.
Then she looked at Grace.
“Ba.”
Grace covered her mouth.
Adrian could not move.
He had imagined this moment thousands of times.
In those fantasies, he lifted Lily into his arms.
He cried.
He laughed.
He promised never to lose her again.
Reality was quieter.
He approached the crib slowly.
Lily watched him.
Adrian crouched.
“Hello, Lily.”
His voice broke on her name.
The infant reached through the wooden rail.
Her fingers closed around his index finger.
Adrian shut his eyes.
For the first time since Evelyn’s death, the most feared man in Chicago cried without trying to hide it.
Grace turned away.
Emma climbed onto a chair beside the crib.
“That’s your daddy.”
Lily smiled.
Adrian laughed through his tears.
Then Grace noticed something beneath Lily’s pillow.
A white envelope.
She froze.
“That wasn’t there this morning.”
Adrian immediately stood.
Grace pulled Lily from the crib.
Adrian lifted the envelope.
His name was written across the front.
ADRIAN.
He recognized the handwriting.
Marcus.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed Grace leaving a grocery store with Lily three days earlier.
On the back were six words.
May you like
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT HER BURIED.
---
