CHAPTER 3 – THE HUNT BEGINS
CHAPTER 3 – THE HUNT BEGINS
Rain hammered against the windshield as three black SUVs surged through traffic behind me.
This wasn't intimidation.
It was an interception.
I slammed the accelerator to the floor.
The engine roared, but the lead SUV gained ground with frightening precision, forcing civilian cars to scatter across the highway.
They weren't amateurs.
They drove like trained security—or military.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was Sophia.
Her voice came in broken sobs.
"Mr. Edward... they're here."
Ice flooded my veins.
"Who?"
"The men with the snake tattoo."
I froze.
"What tattoo?"
"The same one..."
Her breathing became uneven.
"...the men who took the babies."
Before I could ask another question, a loud crash echoed through the call.
Glass shattered.
Someone screamed.
Then the line went dead.
"No!"
I jerked the steering wheel, cutting across two lanes.
Richard no longer mattered.
Sophia did.
By the time I reached the hospital, flashing police lights painted the rain-soaked entrance blue and red.
Nurses stood outside crying.
Patients huddled beneath blankets.
One security guard sat bleeding against an ambulance.
The emergency department looked like a battlefield.
A detective intercepted me.
"Mr. Drummond?"
"What happened?"
"There was a targeted attack."
My stomach dropped.
"They didn't steal medication."
"They didn't rob anyone."
He looked directly into my eyes.
"They came for one child."
I didn't wait for permission.
I ran.
The pediatric hallway had been ripped apart.
Doors hung from broken hinges.
Medical carts lay overturned.
A stuffed rabbit rested in the middle of the corridor, soaked with water from the sprinkler system.
Sophia's rabbit.
I picked it up with shaking hands.
One nurse recognized me.
"They took her."
The words barely reached my ears.
"They knew exactly where she was."
"How many men?"
"Six."
"Were their faces covered?"
"No."
She hesitated.
"They acted like no one would ever identify them."
Then she added something even stranger.
"One of them called Sophia by another name."
"What name?"
The nurse frowned.
"He called her..."
"...Charlotte."
An hour later I stood inside my private study while detectives searched every room in the mansion.
The baby slept peacefully upstairs, completely unaware that the world around him was collapsing.
Richard had vanished.
Sophia had been kidnapped.
The dying witness was dead.
Every answer seemed to disappear the moment I reached for it.
My head of security entered carrying a sealed evidence bag.
"We recovered this from the hospital parking garage."
Inside was a silver pendant.
A tiny lion engraved on one side.
On the back were three initials.
C.D.
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know."
But I did.
Somewhere deep inside my memory...
I had seen that pendant before.
Many years ago.
Around the neck of a little girl.
A little girl standing beside my father.
Unable to sleep, I opened the leather pouch the dying woman had given me.
There were documents I hadn't examined carefully.
Medical files.
Receipts.
Bank transfers.
Then one folded photograph slipped onto the desk.
It showed my father standing beside Richard outside an orphanage.
The date printed on the corner froze my blood.
Three months after my father's official funeral.
Impossible.
I turned the photo over.
Someone had handwritten six words.
"The first heir has been secured."
My hands trembled.
First heir.
Not only heir.
There were others.
Exactly as the dying woman had claimed.
At the bottom of the envelope was a tiny brass key.
No label.
No explanation.
Only a faded number stamped into the metal.
Locker 317.
The next morning I drove alone to the city's oldest train station.
Locker 317 was hidden in a forgotten corridor beneath the platforms.
The key fit perfectly.
Inside sat an old metal box wrapped in waterproof plastic.
My pulse quickened.
There were dozens of files.
Children's photographs.
Adoption certificates.
DNA reports.
Every file carried the same symbol.
A black snake coiled around a crown.
Then I found the last folder.
Across the front someone had written in thick red marker:
PROJECT HEIR.
Before I could open it—
A voice echoed behind me.
"I wouldn't do that."
I spun around.
An elderly janitor stood twenty feet away holding a mop.
His eyes never left the box.
"They've been waiting twelve years for someone to open it."
The lights above us suddenly went out.
Darkness swallowed the hallway.
Then came the unmistakable sound of footsteps.
Not one person.
May you like
Many.
Slowly surrounding me.
