Chapter 5

Every single person in that room turned at once. Silence dropped over the study like a curtain.Nova, completely unaware that she'd just undone eight months of failure and five continents' worth of expertise, sat back on her heels with the same calm satisfaction she had every time she successfully snapped a puzzle piece into place. She looked up at her mother as if to say, "Look what I did." The way toddlers do about everything, from a stacked block tower to a finished cup of juice.Reeves dropped his tablet. It clattered against the hardwood floor, forgotten. The other four specialists stood frozen, staring at the box as though it might be a trick of the light. And Julian Hale, the coldest man in that mansion, a man who had not shown genuine, unguarded emotion since his father's funeral, stood utterly still, his jaw slack, his eyes locked on the small brass latch that had just clicked open beneath a toddler's fingers."That's not possible," Reeves finally whispered."Sir, I am so sorry," Amora stammered, yanking Nova gently away from the desk, her whole body trembling with a kind of fear only a poor single mother understands: the fear of being blamed, the fear of losing the only income keeping her daughter fed. "She doesn't know not to touch things. I'll pay for any damage. Please, I—""Amora." Julian's voice cut through her panic, quieter than she'd ever heard it. "Stop. Nothing is damaged."He walked toward the box like a man approaching something sacred, his hands hovering over the lid before he even dared to lift it. Eight months of dead ends, of sleepless nights, of a grief he hadn't let himself fully feel—all of it collapsing into this single moment, cracked open by a child who didn't even understand what a lock was.He lifted the lid.Inside, there was no gold, no jewels, no shocking fortune the tabloids had speculated about for months. Just a folded, yellowed letter sealed with his father's old wax stamp, and beneath it, a thin leather folder holding a single legal document.Julian's hand shook as he unfolded the letter. His father's handwriting, familiar and aching, filled the page:

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