Chapter 1 - The Empty Desk
Khloe Hayes's phone hit the concrete floor as she whispered, "Damian, don't come looking for me."
A few feet away, a brass cartridge casing rolled beneath a steel cabinet.
Someone had carved a symbol into its side.
It was a broken crown.
Khloe knew Damian Russo would recognize it.
And that changed everything.
Eight hours earlier, Damian had walked into the thirty-second floor of Russo Holdings at exactly eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning.
He stopped.
Khloe's desk was empty.
Not unattended.
Empty.
Her monitor was black. The legal pad she always kept aligned with the edge of her desk was missing. Her fountain pen wasn't there. The small ceramic cup where she kept paper clips had vanished.
And there was no coffee waiting inside his office.
Most men wouldn't have noticed the coffee.
Damian noticed everything.
He stood six feet three inches tall, broad-shouldered beneath a black tailored coat. Dark hair swept back from a face that rarely revealed what he was thinking. Tattoos disappeared beneath his collar and ran down his hands.
People lowered their voices when he entered a room.
Khloe Hayes never did.
That was one of the reasons he'd hired her three years ago.
It was also one of the reasons he'd spent three years pretending she meant nothing more to him than her job title.
Damian turned toward the nearest junior associate.
"Where is Miss Hayes?"
The young man swallowed.
"She hasn't come in, Mr. Russo."
"Did she call?"
"No."
"Email?"
"No."
"Message anyone?"
The associate glanced around.
"I don't think so."
Damian removed his phone.
Khloe answered his calls before the second ring.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
Voicemail.
He ended the call without leaving a message.
Something cold settled behind his ribs.
"Leo."
Leo Mercer appeared from the corridor almost immediately. He had worked beside Damian long enough to recognize the difference between irritation and alarm.
"Send someone to Khloe's apartment."
Leo studied him.
"I'll go."
"Now."
Twenty-two minutes later, Damian's phone rang.
He answered before the first ring had finished.
"Leo."
"You need to come here."
Damian was already reaching for his coat.
"Is Khloe there?"
"No."
The silence lasted barely a second.
"But somebody took her."
Damian said nothing.
That frightened Leo more than shouting would have.
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
He made it in eleven.
Khloe lived in a renovated brownstone in Brooklyn, far enough from Manhattan that she claimed she could breathe when she went home.
The front door to her apartment had been forced inward.
Damian entered.
He stopped again.
Her reading chair lay overturned.
A lamp had shattered beside the wall.
Books were scattered across the hardwood floor.
White lilies lay among broken pieces of a ceramic vase.
Damian stared at them.
Leo followed his gaze.
"You recognize those?"
"No."
It was a lie.
Damian had sent them six days earlier.
Anonymous.
Khloe had mentioned during lunch that white lilies reminded her of her grandmother's garden. Damian had ordered two dozen that afternoon and then spent six days pretending he didn't know why she seemed happier.
Now those flowers were crushed beneath someone's shoeprints.
Damian stepped around them.
"What's missing?"
"That's the strange part," Leo said. "Nothing."
Her laptop remained on the kitchen counter.
A wallet sat beside the door.
A small jewelry box in the bedroom had not been opened.
Television.
Tablet.
Cash.
Everything was there.
Except Khloe.
Damian's jaw tightened.
Then he saw it.
A dark smear against the corner of the kitchen island.
He crouched.
Blood.
Not much.
But enough.
"Cameras?"
"Building system was looped."
"For how long?"
"Three minutes and seventeen seconds."
"Someone knew the system."
"Looks that way."
Damian slowly stood.
This wasn't random.
It wasn't a robbery.
Whoever had entered Khloe's apartment knew exactly where the cameras were.
Exactly how long they needed.
Exactly who they wanted.
Damian looked around again.
"Neighbors?"
"Nobody heard anything."
"That's impossible."
"Unless she knew whoever came through that door."
That possibility hit harder than Damian expected.
He walked into the kitchen.
Khloe's breakfast mug sat half-full beside the sink.
She had been preparing to leave.
Her handbag remained on a chair.
Damian imagined her moving through the apartment that morning.
Checking her schedule.
Packing her files.
Maybe thinking about the impossible man she worked for.
Then someone knocked.
Someone she trusted enough to open the door.
Damian's gaze lowered.
Something metallic reflected beneath the refrigerator.
He crouched and reached underneath.
His fingers closed around brass.
A spent .45-caliber casing rolled into his palm.
Leo came closer.
"That ours?"
Damian didn't answer.
There was a mark scratched into the casing.
A crude crown split vertically through the center.
For the first time that morning, Damian's expression betrayed him.
Leo noticed.
"You know it."
Damian closed his fingers.
"I used to."
"Who?"
"A man who's supposed to be gone."
"Dead?"
Damian looked at him.
"Worse."
Leo waited.
Damian slipped the casing into his pocket.
"Find the three minutes missing from those cameras."
"Damian—"
"Find them."
Leo nodded.
Damian remained behind after everyone left the room.
He walked slowly toward the fallen lilies.
One bloom had survived almost untouched.
He picked it up.
Three years earlier, Khloe Hayes had walked into his office carrying a résumé and wearing an ivory blouse that didn't quite hide how nervous she was.
She'd looked directly at him.
Everyone had warned her about Damian Russo.
She'd apparently decided not to care.
His first question had been deliberately difficult.
"What would you do if I gave you an impossible assignment?"
Khloe had considered it.
"Tell you it's impossible."
He'd almost smiled.
"And then?"
"Do it anyway."
He hired her before she reached the elevator.
She became indispensable within six months.
Within a year, she knew his calendar better than he did.
Within two, she knew when his silence meant anger and when it meant exhaustion.
By the third year, she was the only person who entered his office without knocking.
And Damian had fallen in love with her so quietly that even Khloe didn't know.
Or maybe she did.
That frightened him more.
His phone rang.
Leo.
"We found something."
Damian walked outside.
"What?"
"The loop wasn't perfect."
"Explain."
"Whoever replaced the camera feed repeated three minutes from earlier that morning. But they missed a reflection."
"Reflection where?"
"Building across the street."
Damian got into his car.
"Send it."
A grainy image appeared on his phone.
Khloe stood outside her building.
A dark SUV was parked beside the curb.
A man stood near the rear door.
Damian enlarged the image.
The man's face remained hidden.
But his right hand was visible.
A ring.
Heavy silver.
Broken crown.
Damian stared.
"Can you identify the vehicle?"
"Working on it."
"Do it faster."
"There's something else."
Damian waited.
Leo's voice changed.
"Khloe left you a message."
"Where?"
"Not your phone. Your office."
Damian's pulse changed.
"What message?"
"We found it inside her desk."
"I thought her desk was cleared."
"So did I."
Leo paused.
"It was taped underneath the bottom drawer."
Damian turned the car around.
Ten minutes later, he crossed the office floor.
Leo was waiting beside Khloe's desk.
In his hand was a folded piece of paper.
Damian took it.
His name was written on the outside.
Not Mr. Russo.
Damian.
He unfolded it.
There were only seven words.
If I disappear, don't trust the cameras.
Below them was a number.
Damian looked at Leo.
"What's 314?"
"I don't know."
Damian did.
Three fourteen.
March 14.
The date his father had died.
The official report called it a heart attack.
Damian had been twenty-one.
His father had collapsed alone in a private office and died before paramedics arrived.
There had been no reason to question it.
Until now.
Damian looked again at Khloe's handwriting.
If I disappear.
Not if something happens.
If I disappear.
She had known.
"How long was this note under her desk?"
"We can't tell."
"Fingerprints?"
"Only hers."
Damian folded the note carefully.
"Check everything Khloe accessed over the last sixty days."
Leo hesitated.
"Everything?"
"Everything."
That search took less than an hour.
The answer came from an unexpected place.
Khloe had accessed archived financial records belonging to Damian's father.
Records no secretary had any reason to open.
Payments from twenty years earlier.
Property transfers.
Security contracts.
And one recurring company.
Crown Meridian Holdings.
Damian stared at the name.
He hadn't seen it since his father's funeral.
Crown Meridian had belonged to Adrian Vale.
His father's closest business partner.
And the man Damian had blamed for nearly destroying the Russo family after his father's death.
"Vale disappeared eighteen years ago," Leo said.
"That's what we were told."
Leo looked at the brass casing on Damian's desk.
"And the crown?"
"His people used it."
"You think Vale took Khloe?"
"I think Khloe discovered something connected to him."
Damian looked at her empty chair.
"Then somebody discovered her."
His computer chimed.
An email had arrived.
No sender name.
No subject.
One attachment.
A photograph.
Damian opened it.
Khloe.
She sat on a concrete floor beneath exposed pipes.
Her wrists were free, but she looked exhausted.
A small cut marked her forehead.
Behind her was a steel wall.
Damian's fingers tightened around the desk.
Text appeared beneath the photograph.
YOU HAVE SIX HOURS.
Leo read over his shoulder.
"For what?"
A second message appeared.
BRING WHAT YOUR FATHER STOLE.
Damian stared at it.
"My father never told me about anything he stole."
Leo's phone vibrated.
He checked it.
His face changed.
"What?"
"We traced the email."
"Where?"
Leo slowly raised his eyes.
"Damian, it came from inside this building."
Neither man moved.
Then the elevator at the far end of the floor opened.
One person stepped out.
He carried an old black case.
And when he looked toward Damian, he said a name Damian had not heard spoken in eighteen years.
"Adrian Vale sent me."
The man placed the case on Khloe's empty desk.
The locks clicked open by themselves.
May you like
Something inside began ticking.
And Damian reached toward it...
