Chapter 4 - The Anatomy of a Resurrection
The interior of the Chevrolet SUV was silent as a tomb as Vance pushed the heavy vehicle through the clogged afternoon traffic of the city’s lower east side.
Ethan sat in the rear leather seat, the boy—who had identified himself as Leo—sitting beside him. Ethan had wrapped his own cashmere overcoat around the child’s shivering shoulders. Leo sat clutching a bottle of spring water Vance had handed him, staring out the tinted window with wide, traumatized eyes, his small body occasionally shuddering with a residual sob.
Ethan hadn't stopped looking at the photograph. His thumbs traced the sharp contours of Olivia’s face on the paper, searching for any sign of forgery, any indication that his mind was playing an elaborate, cruel trick on him. But he knew the tear in the top left corner of the photo; he had torn it himself when packing his bag for a weekend trip to the mountains in 2017. He knew the small, heart-shaped birthmark on her right collarbone.
"Who hurt you, Leo?" Ethan asked, his voice low, vibrating with a dark, dangerous cadence that made Vance glance into the rearview mirror.
Leo shrank slightly into the oversized cashmere coat. "The man with the cane. Mr. Silas."
"Silas?" Ethan’s jaw tightened until the bone clicked. The name meant nothing to him, yet it sounded like a heavy iron door slamming shut in a basement. "Who is Mr. Silas?"
"He keeps us in the house," Leo whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the tires. "He comes every few days. He brings the medicine boxes and the dark bottles. When Mom tried to crawl to the window last week, he... he hit her with his stick. When I tried to push him away, he slapped me."
Leo touched the deep, swollen purple bruise on his cheek.
A cold, lethal fury settled inside Ethan’s chest—a dark, quiet space where his corporate ambition usually resided, now replaced by a primal, savage instinct. Someone had kept the love of his life caged in a basement for nine years. Someone had beaten his son.
"Vance," Ethan said quietly.
"Yes, Mr. Cole?"
"Call Dr. Aris Thorne at the private clinic. Tell him to prep a trauma team and an ambulance to meet us at the coordinates Leo gives us. Tell him if he breathes a word of this to the authorities or the press before I give the order, I will pull every cent of funding from his foundation."
"Understood, sir," Vance replied, picking up his encrypted satellite phone.
"And Vance?"
"Sir?"
"Reach into the glove box. Pull out the piece my father left in the vehicle."
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Vance hesitated for a fraction of a second before opening the compartment and withdrawing a heavy, dark-finish SIG Sauer P226 pistol. He passed it over his shoulder. Ethan took the weapon, checked the magazine with a sharp, practiced click, and laid it across his knee beneath his suit jacket.
"Turn left on Mill Street," Leo pointed with a trembling hand toward a row of dilapidated brick warehouses lining the black water of the canal. "It's the red house at the end. The one with the boarded-up windows."
