Chapter 176
The townhouse on Beacon Street was, as a rule, a fortress of silence. The kind of silence that cost money — thick walls, triple-paned glass, and staff who had learned to move without making the floorboards speak.
Justin Collins sat in his study with the heavy oak door closed against the world. He was on a secure line with his campaign manager, discussing polling numbers in the swing districts, but his eyes were unfocused, fixed on the rain lashing the window. His hand gripped a crystal tumbler of scotch tight enough to whiten his knuckles.
Down the hall, that silence was being dismantled, brick by brick.
Aaden, five years old and thoroughly bored, had launched a covert operation. He had slipped past his nanny while she folded laundry in the nursery and infiltrated the forbidden zone: Daddy’s home office.
𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴.𝘤𝘰𝘮
The door was not fully latched. Aaden pushed it open with a soft click.
Justin did not turn around. He was arguing about tax brackets.
Aaden crept across the Persian rug. He knew where the treasure was. He had watched his father open the bottom drawer of the mahogany desk late at night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep — watched the way his shoulders would slump, the way he would sit there for hours, just looking.
Aaden reached the desk and crouched down. The drawer was heavy. He pulled. It stuck. He pulled harder.
Thunk.
It slid open. Inside were files. Boring paper. Aaden frowned and dug his small hands beneath the stack of manila folders until his fingers found something hard — an old leather-bound photo album shoved carelessly underneath. He worked it free.
Not gold. Not a toy.
A photograph, tucked into the first sleeve. The edges were soft and worn, the way things get when they have been held a thousand times. Aaden pulled it from its plastic sheath.
It was a woman sitting on a park bench, her head thrown back in laughter, her long dark hair blowing loose in the wind. She looked happy. She looked like sunlight.
Aaden’s breath caught in his small chest.
He knew that face. He knew those eyes.
“Mommy,” he whispered.
He remembered the smell of vanilla and rain. He remembered the way her pinky finger had hooked around his.
Justin ended the call. He let out a long sigh that seemed to scrape the bottom of his lungs, and turned his chair around.
“Aaden?”
His voice went sharp. He was on his feet before the chair had finished rolling back into the bookshelf.
Aaden flinched, clutching the photograph to his chest.
“What are you doing in here?” Justin demanded, crossing the room in two long strides. His face had gone pale, his eyes wide with a sudden and particular panic.
“I found her,” Aaden said, his voice trembling. He held up the photograph. “It’s Mommy. I saw her at the mall with Uncle G’s wife!”
Justin froze. The color drained from his face and did not return. He stared at the photo in his son’s small hand — the photo he had buried, the photo he had wept over for seven years.
.