Chapter 1
For several seconds after Andrew asked the question, the archive lounge became unnaturally quiet.
The charity broadcast continued somewhere beyond the thick acoustic walls. A host was speaking enthusiastically about preserving Philadelphia’s radio history while, inside the private donor lounge, padded cable reels lay across the carpet and empty record sleeves were scattered around Lucinda’s heels.
Alex stood against Andrew’s leg.
He had stopped crying.
That frightened Andrew too.
Three-year-olds were supposed to cry after being slapped.
Alex simply held the stuffed rabbit against his chest and stared at the severed green ribbon lying on the carpet.
Andrew crouched.
He picked up the ribbon.
“Is this what Mommy put on your rabbit?”
Alex nodded.
Andrew placed it gently in the child’s palm.
Lucinda recovered enough to speak.
“He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
Andrew looked at her.
Marcus pushed himself upright beside the overturned cable-reel cart.
“He’s three, Andrew.”
Alex immediately tightened his grip around the rabbit.
Andrew noticed.
Marcus noticed Andrew noticing.
That was enough.
“Everybody out except them.”
The remaining donors and foundation staff were quietly escorted from the lounge.
Andrew ordered two bodyguards to remain outside the doors.
Then he sat on the carpet beside his son.
Not above him.
Not across a conference table.
Beside him.
“Alex.”
The boy looked at the rabbit.
“You don’t have to tell Daddy anything else right now.”
Lucinda released a breath.
Andrew continued.
“But nobody is taking your rabbit again.”
Alex leaned against him.
It was the first voluntary contact the boy had made with his father in almost a week.
Marcus spoke.
“You’re turning a traumatized child into a witness because you’re angry.”
Andrew looked toward him.
“No.”
His voice was quieter now.
“I’m trying very hard not to.”
That distinction mattered.
Eight months earlier, Andrew’s wife, Elena Caruso, had died after falling down a service staircase during a private foundation reception.
She had been forty-one.
The official explanation had been painfully ordinary.
A fall.
A head injury.
A terrible combination of bad footing, exhaustion, and bad luck.
Andrew had accepted it because grief had left him capable of accepting almost anything that did not require him to think.
Alex had changed immediately afterward.
At first, doctors called his silence grief-related regression.
Then selective mutism.
He still laughed occasionally.
He still cried.
He sometimes whispered while asleep.
But he had almost completely stopped speaking to adults.
Especially Lucinda.
Andrew looked at his aunt.
For years Lucinda had been one of the few people he trusted with Alex without question.
Now he remembered something he should have noticed months earlier.
Whenever Lucinda entered a room, Alex held the rabbit tighter.
Andrew rose.
“Marcus, sit down.”
Marcus laughed.
“You don’t order me around like—”
Two bodyguards opened the door.
Marcus sat.
Andrew turned toward Lucinda.
“You have one opportunity before I start asking people outside this family.”
Lucinda’s face changed.
Families like theirs had survived for decades by keeping uncomfortable truths inside closed rooms.
May you like
Andrew had once considered that loyalty.
Tonight, for the first time, he wondered how many lies had survived for exactly the same reason.
