Chapter 1 - The Name of the Ghost
Liam’s small voice seemed to echo off the floor-to-ceiling glass of the high-rise office. He looked at his brother, then back up at the man whose face mirrored his own.
“Her name is Sarah,” Liam said quietly. “Sarah Vance.”
The name hit Jason like a physical blow, driving the air completely from his lungs. The silver pen he had been nervously twirling clattered onto the polished mahogany desk, rolling until it struck the rim of Lucas’s juice glass.
Sarah.
The woman he had spent five years trying to erase from his memory.
She wasn't a corporate rival, a high-society heiress, or a mistake from a hazy, alcohol-fueled night in the Hamptons. Sarah had been his sanctuary. They had met during his final year of business school, before the armor of the financial world had completely encased his heart. She was a pediatric nurse with a laugh that could shatter his darkest moods and an unyielding belief that people were inherently good—a belief Jason had spent his entire career disproving.
But when Miller Meridian Capital took off, the hunger had consumed him. He began staying at the office until 3:00 AM, skipping dinners, missing anniversaries, and treating their relationship like a low-priority asset. The breaking point had come on a rainy Tuesday five years ago. She had asked him to choose: the endless pursuit of the next billion, or the life they were building together.
Jason had chosen the tower. He had packed his bags, convinced that she would eventually call, that she would understand a man like him couldn't just stop. But she never called. She changed her number, moved out of the city, and vanished into the vastness of the country.
And now, her sons were sitting in his office, lining up blueberries on a million-dollar conference table.
Twins.
Jason did not need a DNA test. The timeline was a perfect, devastating match. She had been pregnant when she left, and she had chosen to raise them entirely alone rather than bind them to a man who loved his own reflection more than his own family.
“Where is she, Liam?” Jason asked, his voice shaking with a raw vulnerability his assistant Claire had never heard in all her years of service.
May you like
Lucas finally spoke, his tiny voice cracking. “The men in the white coats took her. She was coughing a lot. She told us to take the train and give the letter to the guard at the big shiny tower.”
Jason’s chest tightened. He looked down at the crumpled note still gripped in his fist. Take care of them. They have no one left but you.
