Chapter 1 - The Folder Noah Was Afraid Of
“Dad… don’t make her angry.”
Ethan Cole stopped moving.
His eight-year-old son had whispered the words while gripping Ethan’s wrist hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
Noah sat in his wheelchair beside the floor-to-ceiling windows of their Brooklyn Heights penthouse, a light-gray blanket covering his thin legs. He was supposed to be asleep.
Instead, he looked terrified.
Ethan had returned from Philadelphia three hours early after his final client meeting was canceled. Vanessa Reed, Noah’s live-in nanny for nearly ten months, had seemed almost irritated when he walked through the door.
Now Ethan understood why.
Behind him, Vanessa suddenly lunged toward the couch.
A deep-burgundy leather folder was half-hidden beneath it.
Ethan reached first.
Vanessa caught his forearm.
Hard.
“That is not yours.”
Ethan stared at her hand until she released him.
Then he picked up the folder.
“Why is my son scared of you?”
Vanessa stepped between Ethan and Noah.
“He’s overtired.”
Noah shrank backward.
Ethan opened the folder.
A crayon drawing slid partly out.
So did the edge of an official-looking document.
Vanessa’s polished expression disappeared.
“Don’t open that.”
Ethan opened it wider.
Noah Cole’s name was printed across the top of a pediatric transfer authorization.
Near the bottom was Ethan’s signature.
Except Ethan had never signed it.
Noah pointed.
“She said you already signed.”
Vanessa lunged again.
Ethan stepped back and raised the folder beyond her reach.
Another page slipped free.
The heading read:
Pediatric Residential Transfer Summary.
Under Noah’s name, faintly visible beneath a correction strip, was another child’s name.
Caleb Reed.
Ethan looked at Vanessa.
Reed.
The same last name.
Her face had gone completely pale.
“What is this?”
Vanessa’s eyes flicked toward Noah.
For the first time since Ethan had hired her, she looked frightened rather than controlled.
Then Noah whispered something worse.
“She said if I told you, you’d send me there faster.”
Ethan slowly turned toward his son.
“Send you where?”
May you like
Noah pointed to the burgundy folder.
And began to cry.
