CHAPTER 1: THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
Daniel didn’t remember moving.
One moment he was standing frozen on the gray path, the words your sister didn’t run away still ringing in his ears. The next, his hand was wrapped tightly around the stranger’s wrist—the man in the white shirt—his grip firm enough to make the man finally look at him.
“I said let her go.”
The park felt suddenly smaller.
The man’s eyes flicked to Daniel’s face, calculating. Not afraid. Not surprised. Just… annoyed.
“This has nothing to do with you,” the man said flatly.
The barefoot girl flinched as his fingers dug harder into her shoulder.
Daniel stepped closer. “It has everything to do with me.”
For a moment, the wind was the only sound—rustling dead leaves, rattling bare branches.
Then the man smiled.
A thin, humorless smile.
“Daniel Reed,” he said. “You really are just like your father.”
Daniel’s blood turned cold.
“You know me,” Daniel said.
The man leaned in, his voice low. “Everyone knows the Reeds.”
He released the girl abruptly, shoving her forward. She stumbled, nearly falling, and Daniel caught her instinctively. When he looked up again, the man was already walking away, disappearing between the apartment blocks as if he had never been there.
“Hey!” Daniel shouted. “You don’t just walk away!”
But the man didn’t turn back.
The girl was shaking violently now.
Daniel guided her to the bench and draped his coat around her shoulders.
“Sit,” he said gently. “You’re safe. I promise.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide and wet. “You can’t promise that.”
Daniel swallowed. “What’s your name?”
“Lena,” she whispered. “Your sister called me Lena.”
Daniel’s chest tightened.
“You knew her,” he said.
Lena nodded.
“She was kind,” Lena said quickly, as if afraid the memory might disappear if she didn’t speak fast enough. “She helped people no one else would help. Girls like me.”
“What happened to her?” Daniel asked.
Lena’s hands clenched in the coat.
“They locked her away,” she said. “Not in a prison. In a place that looks like help.”
Daniel felt sick.
“Who did?”
Lena hesitated, then whispered, “Your family.”
The word hit harder than any accusation Daniel had ever heard.
“That’s not possible,” he said automatically. “My father—”
“Your father signed the papers,” Lena said. “I saw his name.”
Daniel stood up, pacing now.
“No. My sister disappeared when I was fifteen. They said she ran away. They said she was unstable.”
Lena looked at him with heartbreaking certainty.
“That’s what they tell everyone.”
Daniel stopped.
“Why are they after you?”
Lena’s lips trembled.
“Because she made me promise,” she said. “If she didn’t come back… I was supposed to find you.”
May you like
Daniel closed his eyes.
And for the first time in his life, he allowed himself to consider the possibility that everything he knew about his family was a lie.
