Chapter 1 - The Bracelet on the Pavement
Daniel Cross slapped the exhausted seven-year-old boy before he even noticed the baby trembling in his arms.
The first slap cracked through the noise of the night market.
The second made several strangers stop walking.
Ethan stumbled sideways on the rain-slick pavement, his cheek burning, but he never lifted his hands to protect himself. Both arms tightened around eight-month-old Lily.
“Please,” he whispered. “Don’t hurt my sister.”
Daniel stood over him, breathing hard.
Thirty seconds earlier, he had been stepping out of Marrow House, one of San Francisco’s most expensive private dining rooms, irritated by a board dinner and staring at a message from his father.
Then a small body had slammed into him.
His phone had flown from his hand and shattered beneath a passing cart.
Daniel had reacted before thinking.
Now bottles and crushed aluminum cans rolled around his polished shoes.
A delivery scooter screamed past the curb.
Ethan dropped onto one knee and twisted his shoulder toward the pavement, shielding Lily with his entire body.
The baby screamed.
Daniel’s anger faltered.
The boy was filthy. His jacket sleeves were too short. A canvas sack hung torn from one shoulder. Beneath it, Daniel saw thin wrists, scraped knuckles, and shoes whose soles had nearly separated.
Then something slipped from Lily’s old cream blanket.
A gold bracelet spun across the wet pavement.
It stopped against Daniel’s shoe.
His raised hand slowly lowered.
He bent.
A tiny gold letter hung from the chain.
L.
Daniel’s face emptied.
He turned the clasp over.
A crescent had been engraved into the gold.
“No.”
His fingers began to shake.
Ethan backed away.
Daniel barely noticed.
He tore open his wallet and pulled out an old photograph protected behind two credit cards.
In the picture, a younger Daniel sat beside a hospital window holding a newborn.
Around the newborn’s wrist was the same bracelet.
Same chain.
Same letter.
Same crescent.
“No,” Daniel said again.
Lily’s knitted hat slipped sideways.
Behind her left ear was a faint crescent-shaped birthmark.
Daniel stopped breathing.
The photograph almost fell from his hand.
“Where did you get that baby?”
Ethan recoiled.
“She’s my sister.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lily.”
Daniel looked at the gold L.
His mind seemed to split open.
He dropped to one knee.
“What is your mother’s name?”
Ethan hesitated.
The crowd had formed a loose circle now. Phones were pointed toward them.
“Anna.”
Daniel went completely still.
“Anna what?”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“Just Anna.”
“Was it Anna Reed?”
The boy’s eyes widened.
Daniel knew.
That terrified Ethan more than the slaps.
“Anna was my wife,” Daniel said.
The market noise seemed to recede around him.
“She disappeared eight years ago.”
Ethan stared.
Daniel looked at Lily.
“With our baby.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Ethan said.
His voice was small but firm.
“My sister’s eight months old.”
Daniel knew that.
Of course he knew that.
Yet the bracelet had been around his newborn son’s wrist almost eight years earlier.
The birthmark was wrong, too.
Or rather, terrifyingly familiar.
Daniel looked harder at Ethan.
Brown hair matted against his forehead. Gray-green eyes. A tiny scar at the corner of his eyebrow.
Something about him made Daniel’s stomach twist.
“How old are you?”
“Seven.”
“When do you turn eight?”
Ethan’s suspicion sharpened.
“October.”
Six weeks.
Daniel’s pulse slammed against his throat.
Behind him, someone muttered, “That’s Daniel Cross.”
Another voice said, “I got the whole thing.”
Daniel looked around.
Three phones.
Maybe five.
He saw himself suddenly as everyone else did: a wealthy thirty-nine-year-old businessman in a tailored charcoal coat standing over a starving child he had just struck.
His rage vanished into shame.
“Ethan,” he said quietly.
“How do you know my name?”
Daniel realized the boy had never told him.
Lily had stopped crying.
She was staring at Daniel.
Then her tiny arm emerged from the blanket.
Her fingers opened toward him.
Daniel’s expression broke.
Ethan pulled her back.
“No.”
The word landed harder than any accusation.
“You don’t touch her.”
Daniel swallowed.
“You’re right.”
Ethan blinked.
Daniel put the bracelet on the pavement between them.
“I was wrong to hit you.”
“You hit me twice.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t even ask what happened.”
“No.”
“You just saw somebody smaller than you.”
Daniel could not answer.
A woman from a noodle stall stepped forward.
“I called the police.”
Daniel nodded.
“Good.”
That surprised everyone.
Especially Ethan.
Daniel took off his coat and placed it on the pavement, several feet away.
“For the baby.”
Ethan did not pick it up.
“Where is Anna?” Daniel asked.
Ethan’s face changed.
Daniel saw exhaustion become fear.
“She was supposed to come back.”
“When?”
“Three nights ago.”
Daniel’s blood turned cold.
“From where?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“You’ve been alone with Lily for three days?”
Ethan said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Daniel’s phone was broken. He borrowed one from the restaurant manager and called his attorney before the police arrived.
Not to protect himself.
“Call Maya,” he said. “Tell her there are two children here. Their mother is missing. Tell her I may know who she is.”
His father, Charles Cross, called the borrowed phone while Daniel was still speaking.
Daniel declined it.
Ethan noticed.
“Who was that?”
“My father.”
Ethan’s expression closed again.
Lily began fussing.
He rocked her automatically.
Then something white appeared beneath the torn edge of the cream blanket.
A folded piece of paper.
Ethan frowned.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Daniel did not move closer.
“Open it.”
Ethan unfolded the damp paper.
Anna’s handwriting appeared beneath the neon light.
Daniel recognized it instantly.
His heart hammered as Ethan read aloud.
“If something happens to me, find Daniel Cross.”
Daniel stared at him.
Ethan continued.
“Show him the bracelet.”
His voice grew weaker.
“And ask him one question.”
Daniel’s mouth went dry.
Ethan looked up.
“What did your father do with four million eight hundred thousand dollars?”
Daniel felt the entire past rise beneath his feet.
Because $4.8 million was exactly how much Anna had supposedly stolen the night she disappeared.
And only three living people were supposed to know that number.
Daniel.
May you like
Anna.
And Daniel’s father.
