“I didn’t send him to your car, Ethan.”
My spine went completely, terrifyingly rigid:
“What did you just say?”
“I didn’t send him to you,” Claire choked out, her fingers weakly clutching the sleeve of my Brioni jacket:
“He ran because the men with the needles broke into the basement three hours ago.”
“They forced the liquid down my throat.”
“They told me that before sunset today… the last Mercer bloodline in New York would sleep in an unmarked potter’s grave.”
Claire turned her head toward the boy, who was standing beside my hip, his small hands still clutching the toy truck:
“Ethan…” she sobbed, every word tearing through my ribs like a serrated bayonet:
“Leo is not an orphan I found on the waterfront.”
“He was born eight months after the explosion under the bridge.”
“He has your father’s eyes.”
“He has your grandfather’s blood.”
“And the men who poisoned me this morning… were sent by your own family.”
CHAPTER 3: THE AUTOPSY OF A PHANTOM TRUST
The room seemed to drop forty degrees in a single, terrifying half-second.
Leo looked up at me.
His five-year-old face was pale, streaked with dried tears and soot, but his hazel eyes—my father’s eyes, my grandfather Arthur Mercer’s eyes—locked onto mine with an unblinking, fearless clarity that no mafia hitman in New York possessed.
