Chapter 5 - THE DRAWER AND THE CRACK
The silence inside the dark conference room became suffocatingly heavy.
Ethan stared through the glass at Ellie's waving hand. His breathing became shallow, his broad shoulders rising and falling against the dark wool of his overcoat.
Slowly, as if operating under a powerful, magnetic pull, Ethan turned his head away from the glass. His dark eyes moved across the dim room, looking through the open interior doorway toward his walnut desk in the main suite.
His gaze locked onto the bottom right drawer of his desk.
It was the only drawer on the entire executive floor fitted with a heavy, biometric steel lock—a drawer that had remained unopened, untouched, and sealed for four agonizing years.
Inside that locked drawer lay a small, silver-framed photograph wrapped in a piece of soft blue flannel.
A sudden, sharp flash of profound, unbearable grief cracked through Ethan's cold, formidable facade. The ruthless crime boss, who had ordered executions without blinking and swallowed rival corporate empires without mercy, looked at his desk drawer with raw, devastating pain in his eyes.
Across the room, little Ellie lowered her hand, then raised it again, waving her fingers toward the glass a second time, her small face lighting up with a bright, innocent smile.
Ethan looked back at the baby.
May you like
He slowly set his untouched scotch glass down on the table.
He pushed his heavy frame up from the leather chair. Standing six-foot-two in his black suit and dark overcoat, he took three slow, heavy steps toward the heavy glass door of the conference room.
