By the time the first knock reached Gideon Crosswell’s dining room, the snow had already swallowed half of Chicago.
Wind screamed between the stone walls of his Gold Coast estate, bending the bare trees and burying the iron gates beneath drifting white. The weather service had warned people to stay off the roads. Flights were grounded. Lake Shore Drive was closing in sections.
None of that mattered to Gideon.
For the first time in years, he wanted the entire city to leave him alone.
Exactly one year earlier, his four-year-old daughter had died.
Ren Crosswell had been the only human being on earth who had never been afraid of him.
Politicians watched their words around Gideon.
Businessmen smiled too quickly.
Men who worked for him lowered their voices when he entered a room.
Ren had climbed onto his lap while he was conducting meetings, stolen his expensive pens, drawn crooked hearts on documents worth millions, and once informed three armed men in his office that they needed to stop looking so “grumpy.”
She had called sunflowers happy flowers.
“They follow the sun, Daddy.”
That morning Gideon had driven alone to the cemetery.
No guards.
No driver.
No entourage.
He had carried twelve sunflowers through six inches of snow and knelt before a small black headstone until his knees went numb.
RENATA CROSSWELL.
BELOVED DAUGHTER.
FOUR YEARS OF LIGHT.
He had remained there long after there was anything left to say.
Now those same flowers stood in a crystal vase on his dining-room table.
Gideon sat twenty feet away from them with an untouched glass of whiskey in his hand.
Three faint taps sounded somewhere in the mansion.
He looked up.
Another three.
For several seconds, Gideon did not move.
Nobody knocked on his door.
Visitors were announced at the gate. Deliveries stopped at the security station. Even men powerful enough to walk into the mayor’s office without appointments waited for permission before approaching Gideon Crosswell’s front steps.
His head of household security, Matteo Russo, appeared from the corridor.
“Did you hear that?”
Gideon nodded.
Matteo touched the radio hidden beneath his jacket.
“Front entrance. Check it.”
A guard answered.
There was a pause.
Then the guard’s voice returned, confused.
“Sir, we have two children at the door.”
Gideon frowned.
“Children?”
“Yes.”
“Where are their parents?”
“Don’t see any.”
Gideon stood.
At forty-one, he had the kind of quiet presence that made shouting unnecessary. He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a dark shirt and tailored black pants, his suit jacket abandoned somewhere upstairs. Gray had begun appearing near his temples, though grief had aged him more in the last twelve months than time ever had.
He walked through the marble foyer as another gust rattled the windows.
One of the guards opened the inner door.
Cold air swept inside.
Two girls stood beneath the stone portico.
For a moment, Gideon simply stared.
The older child looked nine at most. Wet brown hair clung to her cheeks. Her cream-colored coat had once been nice but was now stained with mud, and the toes of her boots were soaked dark.
She held a dented metal cooking pot with both hands.
Beside her stood a smaller girl, perhaps five.
Her pink coat was too large, its sleeves covering half her hands. She shook so badly her teeth clicked.
The older girl looked past the guards until her frightened eyes found Gideon.
“We’re sorry,” she whispered.
Gideon stepped closer.
“For what?”
“For bothering you.”
Another gust scattered snow across the doorway.
The older girl swallowed.
“We’re hungry.”
Something inside Gideon tightened.
He had heard men beg him for mercy with less fear than these children used to ask for bread.
“Where is your mother?”
The child’s grip tightened around the pot.
“She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know.”
Gideon looked toward Matteo.
“Bring them inside.”
One guard hesitated.
“Boss, we should search—”
“They’re children.”
The guard immediately stepped aside.
Warmth wrapped around the girls as they entered.
The younger one looked down at the polished marble floor, apparently afraid her wet boots would ruin it.
“We’re making a mess,” she whispered.
Gideon heard her.
“So am I.”
The little girl looked up.
For the first time, he saw the faintest hint of curiosity in her face.
“Matteo.”
“Yes?”
“Kitchen. Soup. Bread. Hot chocolate.”
The older girl immediately said, “We don’t need chocolate.”
Gideon studied her.
“What’s your name?”
“Nora.”
“And hers?”
Nora glanced at the younger child.
“Lucy.”
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
“Lucy?”
“Five.”
He nodded toward the dining room.
“You can eat before you answer anything else.”
Nora looked suspiciously at the armed men.
“Are you police?”
“No.”
“You look worse than police.”
One of the guards turned his face away to hide a smile.
Gideon almost remembered how to do the same.
Almost.
Ten minutes later, the girls sat at the end of a dining table designed for twenty-four people.
The absurdity of it struck Gideon.
Two half-frozen children looked smaller than porcelain dolls beneath the chandelier.
A cook who had been preparing to leave placed tomato soup, bread, chicken, and warm milk in front of them.
Nora tried to eat slowly.
Lucy did not.
The little girl tore bread into pieces and pushed them into her mouth almost faster than she could chew.
“Slow down,” Nora whispered.
“I’m hungry.”
“There’s more,” Gideon said.
Lucy froze.
He nodded toward the kitchen.
“As much as you want.”
She stared at him for several seconds, then resumed eating.
Gideon remained standing near the fireplace.
He knew hunger.
Not the kind these girls knew.
He had grown up in a two-bedroom apartment where his mother stretched pasta across three meals, but he had never gone days without food.
Watching Lucy scrape the bowl with her spoon made something dark move in his chest.
Someone had failed these children.
Gideon had built an entire life around making people regret failures.
Nora finished half her soup before she asked, “Are you Mr. Crosswell?”
“Yes.”
Her spoon stopped.
Something passed across her face.
Recognition.
Fear.
“Your first name is Gideon?”
“Yes.”
Lucy looked at her sister.
Nora shook her head almost imperceptibly.
Gideon noticed.
“Who told you to come here?”
“No one.”
“Then how did you know my name?”
Nora stared into her soup.
Gideon waited.
People often filled silence because they feared it.
Children were no different.
But before Nora answered, Lucy’s attention shifted.
The sunflower arrangement stood in the center of the table.
She stared at it.
Her lips parted.
The spoon slipped slightly between her fingers.
“Happy flowers.”
Gideon’s heartbeat stopped.
He turned his head.
“What?”
Lucy pointed.
“The happy flowers.”
Gideon took one slow step toward the table.
Nora suddenly went pale.
“Lucy.”
But the younger girl continued innocently.
“They’re happy because they follow the sun.”
The room disappeared.
For one impossible second Gideon was kneeling in Ren’s bedroom again.
Yellow wallpaper.
A stuffed rabbit.
His daughter holding a sunflower almost as tall as she was.
They follow the sun, Daddy.
His hand tightened around the back of a chair.
“Who taught you that?”
Lucy looked at him.
“The little girl.”
“What little girl?”
Nora grabbed her sister’s wrist.
“Don’t tell him.”
Gideon’s eyes moved to Nora.
“Why?”
Her chair scraped backward.
“Because Mama said we were never supposed to talk about her.”
The words hit harder than the first.
Gideon moved closer.
“Talk about who?”
Nora’s breathing quickened.
Before she could respond, footsteps came rapidly from the corridor.
Matteo entered.
The expression on his face had changed.
“Boss.”
Gideon did not look away from Nora.
“What?”
“We checked the security cameras.”
“And?”
Matteo glanced toward the children.
“They never came through the front gate.”
Gideon finally turned.
“What do you mean?”
“No movement at the main entrance. No pedestrian alarms. No breach alert.”
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Nora stood abruptly.
Lucy followed because Nora pulled her.
Gideon saw genuine panic.
“How did you get here?” he demanded.
Nora remained silent.
Then light flashed across the dining-room windows.
Not lightning.
Headlights.
A black SUV moved slowly through the snow outside.
Nora dropped her spoon.
It struck the floor.
“He found us.”
Lucy began crying.
Gideon looked through the windows.
The vehicle approached along the private drive.
Someone had opened the gate for it.
“Who found you?” Gideon asked.
Nora backed away from the windows.
Her entire body shook.
“Please don’t let him take us.”
“Who?”
The SUV stopped near the entrance.
A door opened outside.
Nora stared at Gideon Crosswell, the man newspapers never named directly but half the city feared.
Then she whispered five words that changed everything.
“The man who killed Ren.”
Gideon did not breathe.
Nora’s eyes filled with tears.
“The man who killed your daughter.”
The front door opened.
A familiar voice echoed through the foyer.
“Gideon?”
Gideon slowly turned.
Victor Dane walked into the mansion.
And Gideon’s world shifted beneath his feet.
Victor had worked beside him for eleven years.
He had attended Ren’s funeral.
He had carried her coffin.
And now two starving children were hiding behind Gideon’s chair because they believed Victor Dane had murdered her.