Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN ELENA LEFT BEHINDLily survived the attack by luck.
Victor survived it by instinct.
A masked gunman came through the apartment door.
Victor came through the adjoining wall.
The confrontation lasted less than thirty seconds.
When it ended, the attacker was dead.
A small white crown tattoo marked his neck.
Victor stared at it.
"The Crown Saints."
Lily had heard the name.
A criminal network that had evolved from street gangs into something much larger.
Politicians used them.
Corporations used them.
People who needed violence without fingerprints used them.
Then Julian called.
Ethan was gone.
Taken from Dr. Hale's clinic.
A fake nurse had arrived with a transfer order.
The guards had verified it through central security.
The elevator had carried Ethan away.
Victor's face became terrifyingly calm.
"Find my son."
At that moment, the dead attacker's phone rang.
Victor answered.
A video appeared.
Ethan was lying in a white crib.
Alive.
A card rested beside him.
BRING THE NANNY TO ST. AGNES BEFORE DAWN.
Lily's heart stopped.
St. Agnes.
The abandoned orphanage where her mother had grown up.
Victor looked at her.
"How do you know that place?"
Lily hesitated.
Then she finally told him.
"Elena was my sister."
Victor went completely still.
"What?"
"My father had another family."
"Elena had no sister."
"She did."
"Why didn't she tell me?"
"She was going to."
"When?"
"The night she died."
Silence.
Lily reached beneath the lining of her dress.
She pulled out a brass key.
"She gave me this."
Victor stared at it.
"What does it open?"
"I don't know."
A folded note had been attached.
Protect Ethan from the woman in white.
Victor immediately thought of Serena.
But Lily had another thought.
Dr. Hale.
She had also worn white at the charity dinner where Elena had become suspicious.
Suddenly the phrase meant something larger.
Not a woman.
A system.
They went to St. Agnes.
The orphanage stood behind rusted gates and dead trees.
Inside, the air smelled of dust, mold, and forgotten childhoods.
A white crib waited beneath a single light.
Empty.
Then a projector came alive.
Serena appeared on the wall.
Her face was bruised.
Her wrists were tied.
A distorted voice spoke.
"Choose carefully, Victor."
"Your fiancée is in one building."
"Your son is in another."
"Twenty minutes."
Two addresses appeared.
The Blackwood mansion.
A Crown Saints warehouse.
Lily noticed something around Serena's neck.
A brass key.
The same key Elena had given her.
Only Serena's was covered in blood.
Victor stared.
"Someone wants us to choose."
Lily whispered.
"No."
"They want us to choose wrong."
Victor looked at her.
For the first time, they understood the same thing at the same moment.
Someone had planned the entire night.
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And Lily was not merely a witness.
She was part of the plan.
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