Chapter 2 - The Crystal Desert
The dining room of the Hale estate was designed to humiliate anyone who sat within it.
It was a cavernous hall modeled after a Renaissance palazzo, featuring vaulted ceilings painted with baroque angels looking down in perpetual judgment. Dominating the center was a forty-foot mahogany table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, large enough to seat twenty elite capos, corrupt politicians, or foreign dignitaries.
Tonight, it seated one.
Julian sat near the head of the table, an island of isolation surrounded by a vast, polished sea of wood. A single crystal chandelier cast a brilliant, cold light downward, illuminating a silver platter containing a rare steak and a glass of vintage Bordeaux. Two armed guards—men whose job descriptions included stopping bullets with their own torsos—stood stiffly at attention by the massive double doors twenty feet away.
Julian cut a piece of meat. The silver knife slid through the medium-rare center with barely a sound.
He didn't eat. He just stared at the empty seat immediately to his left.
Two years ago, that chair had been occupied by a small booster seat. Two years ago, a pair of sticky, chocolate-stained hands used to reach across the table to steal his bread rolls while a high-pitched voice babbled about a butterfly she saw in the garden.
Julian closed his eyes, taking a slow, controlled breath through his nose. He could still smell the sweet scent of strawberry shampoo. He could still feel the phantom weight of tiny arms wrapping around his neck. Then came the fire. The twisted metal of the SUV. The hospital monitor flatlining. The cold, sterile smell of the morgue that had permanently frozen his heart into a block of black ice.
Focus, he told himself. You are Julian Hale. You don't feel. You rule.
He raised the fork to his mouth.
Clack.
The sound was tiny, innocent, and entirely out of place in the fortress of the underworld.
Julian’s eyes snapped open. His right hand instantly dropped away from the fork, hovering mere inches from the custom-built shoulder holster beneath his jacket where a suppressed Sig Sauer rested like a sleeping viper.
The guards at the door tensed, their hands dropping to their tactical belts.
From around the edge of the towering marble pillar stepped a tiny figure.
She stood frozen in a patch of golden light, wearing a bright teal dress patterned with clumsy white daisies. Her dark curls were gathered into a lopsided ponytail on top of her head, held together by a pink scrunchie. Her small hands were clasped nervously in front of her stomach.
Amara.
Julian stared at her, utterly disarmed not by a weapon, but by the sheer, unfiltered vulnerability of a child standing in the lair of a monster.
"Mister?" the little girl whispered, her voice echoing softly against the high stone walls.
Julian blinked, his brain momentarily failing to process how a three-year-old had slipped past a perimeter guarded by former Spetsnaz operatives and marine snipers. "Yes?" he said, his voice coming out lower and harsher than intended.
May you like
Amara didn't flinch, though the guards visibly braced for impact. Her big, chocolate-brown eyes drifted from Julian’s face down to the massive plate of food, then across the thirty-plus feet of empty mahogany chairs stretching into the gloom.
"May I eat with you?" she asked.
