Chapter 1
The first sound I heard was knocking.
Not loud.
Not at first.
Three small impacts somewhere beneath the basement corridor.
I stopped walking.
One of my bodyguards nearly walked into me.
“Boss?”
I raised one hand.
Again.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Then a voice.
Muffled.
Terrified.
“Daddy… please help me!”
Everything inside me disappeared except that voice.
I ran.
The cold-storage room stood at the end of the corridor.
The chest freezer in the center of it was shaking.
Tiny fists pounded beneath the lid.
The exterior latch was closed.
I tore it open.
“Lily!”
My daughter looked up at me from inside the freezer.
Three years old.
Shivering.
Face wet with tears.
I lifted her so fast I nearly ripped the blanket rack over with my shoulder.
One of my men handed me a thermal blanket.
I wrapped it around her and held her against my chest.
“I've got you.”
Her fingers locked around my collar.
“Daddy…”
“I'm here.”
Footsteps sounded behind us.
Celeste appeared first.
My fiancée.
Then Preston, her older brother.
Grace came last.
Their mother.
All three stopped in the doorway.
Celeste covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
I looked at her.
“Where were you?”
“I was upstairs.”
Preston stepped forward.
“What happened?”
I didn't answer.
Lily suddenly stopped shaking.
Not completely.
But enough for me to notice.
She was staring over my shoulder.
At Grace.
My daughter's face changed.
Fear.
Recognition.
Something older than the freezer.
“She said Mommy screamed louder than me that night.”
The room went silent.
I felt my body go still.
Lily's mother had been dead for eleven months.
Alessia.
My wife.
The woman I had buried after a fire on the northern road destroyed the car she had been traveling in.
Lily had barely spoken about that night since.
Whenever I asked what she remembered, she cried.
So I stopped asking.
Grace took one step backward.
Then made the mistake that changed everything.
“She wasn't supposed to remember that night.”
Nobody moved.
Grace's eyes widened.
She heard herself too late.
I slowly turned.
“What did you just say?”
Preston moved first.
He charged me.
I pushed Lily toward my bodyguard.
“Take her.”
Then Preston swung.
I slipped the punch, caught his forearm and drove my fist into his body.
He folded and crashed backward into the rolling insulated rack.
Crates overturned.
Supply bins scattered.
Thermal blankets spilled over him.
Celeste lunged toward Lily.
Not toward me.
Toward my daughter.
I caught her wrist.
“Don't.”
She twisted hard.
“Raffaele, she's confused!”
I redirected her away from Lily.
She stumbled sideways into the metal shelving.
Light containers tumbled around her.
Two bodyguards stepped between her and my daughter.
Grace turned toward the door.
Another guard blocked it.
I looked at her.
“You have five minutes.”
Grace's face had gone pale.
“To tell me what happened that night.”
She said nothing.
Lily sobbed behind me.
Then she whispered something else.
“Daddy?”
I turned.
She pointed toward the freezer.
“Mommy was in here too.”
My heart stopped.
Grace closed her eyes.
And suddenly I understood why Preston had attacked me before I could ask another question.
May you like
The freezer wasn't where tonight's story started.
It was where the old one had never ended.
