Chapter 2 - The Ghost of the Past
The silence that followed Liam’s answer was heavier than the steel-and-glass skyscraper encasing them. Outside, the morning traffic of Manhattan continued its frantic rush, but inside Jason’s corner office, the world had shrunk to the space between the conference table and the black leather chair where two little boys sat finishing their pancakes.
“What is your mother’s name?” Jason asked again, his voice dropping an octave, slipping into the cold, surgical register he usually reserved for board members attempting to hide an embezzlement scheme.
Liam chewed slowly, his ice-blue eyes fixed on Jason with a terrifying, adult-like gravity. Beside him, Lucas pushed his plate away, having eaten every single blueberry and left the scrambled eggs untouched.
“Her name is Sarah,” Liam said quietly.
The name hit Jason like a physical blow.
He didn’t flinch, but his fingers gripped the edge of the conference table so hard his knuckles turned white.
Sarah.
It couldn’t be. It was a common name. Millions of women named Sarah walked the streets of New York, rode the subways, drank coffee at corner bodegas, and lived ordinary, uncomplicated lives. But the icy grip around his chest insisted otherwise.
Seven years ago, Sarah Adams had walked out of his life without a forwarding address, without a phone call, and without a single backward glance.
At the time, Jason had been twenty-nine, a ruthless junior partner at a private equity firm who believed that love was a variable that interfered with ROI, and that sentimentality was a disease of the weak. Sarah had been an art history graduate student working part-time at an uptown bookstore—soft-spoken, fiercely independent, and entirely unimpressed by his bank account, his bespoke suits, or his grand ambitions. She had seen through his armor before he even knew he was wearing it.
He remembered the night it ended.
They had been sitting on the floor of his cramped, rented studio apartment because he hadn't yet bought furniture for the living room. She had looked at him over a takeout box of pad thai and said words that still haunted the dark corners of his memory: “You aren’t building an empire, Jason. You’re building a cage. And one day, you’ll look around and realize you’re the only prisoner.”
He had laughed it off. He had told her she didn't understand how the world worked—that comfort and power were the only shields worth having.
Three days later, she was gone. Her closet was empty. Her books were gone. The only thing left on the kitchen counter was a white porcelain mug with a chipped handle and a small, folded sticky note: Goodbye, Jason. Go win your world.
He had spent the next three months convincing himself it was the best thing that could have happened. He threw himself into his work with fanatical zeal, launching Miller Meridian Capital before he turned thirty-five, accumulating a net worth that made headlines in the Financial Times, and turning his heart into a vault that admitted no visitors.
He had won his world.
And now, two little boys with his eyes and her nose were sitting in his office, telling him that Sarah was gone.
“Sarah Adams?” Jason asked, his voice tighter than he intended.
Liam shook his head. “Just Mommy. Sometimes Sarah-Jane.”
Jason’s breath hitched. Sarah-Jane. That was her full name—a name she rarely used, a name she had told him only once during a late-night conversation in the dark.
“Where is she?” Jason demanded, his professional detachment shattering completely.
Lucas spoke up for the first time, his voice small and raspy. “She went to sleep.”
Jason’s stomach dropped into a bottomless void. “What do you mean, she went to sleep?”
“In the white room,” Liam explained, his little brow furrowing as he tried to find the right words. “With the beepy machine. She told us to pack our backpacks. She said if the bad men came or if she didn't wake up before the sun came out, we had to take the red bus to the big tall building with the shiny glass and give the note to the man with my eyes.”
Claire Whitman, who had been standing quietly near the door with her tablet clutched to her chest, gasped softly.
Jason stood up so fast his chair rolled backward and slammed into the wood-paneled wall. He didn't care. He walked toward the boys, kneeling down until he was at eye level with Liam.
“Listen to me very carefully,” Jason said, his hands resting gently, almost trembling, on the edges of the table. “Where were you staying? What hospital or what address?”
Liam looked confused, but Lucas pointed a small, sticky finger toward the window, looking out over the sprawling concrete jungle of Manhattan. “Near the river. Where the big bridge is. With the yellow door.”
Jason didn't wait to hear another word. He stood up, turning to Claire.
“Cancel every meeting on my schedule today. Lock down the tenth floor. Put security outside this office and let no one in—do you understand me? No one.”
“Mr. Miller—Jason,” Claire stammered, her eyes wide with shock. “What’s happening? Who are—”
“They’re my sons,” Jason said, the words tearing out of his throat like a confession he had spent a decade avoiding.
May you like
Without waiting for Claire’s reaction, Jason grabbed his heavy wool overcoat from the rack, pulled his encrypted smartphone from his pocket, and dialed Vance, his head of security.
“Vance,” Jason barked as he strode toward the private elevator. “Drop everything. Pull up every medical record, emergency room admission, and homeless shelter intake in the past forty-eight hours under the name Sarah Adams or Sarah-Jane Adams in the five boroughs. I want an address now.”
