Chapter 2 - THE GOLD POCKET WATCH
The darkness in the private dining room was absolute, heavy, and suffocating.
Daniel didn't think. He reacted.
Twenty years of unimaginable grief, of waking up in cold sweats, of staring at empty playgrounds—all of it transformed into pure, primal instinct. He lunged across the shattered glass on the marble floor. He didn't care about the gun. He only cared about the girl.
His daughter.
He hit Emily’s shoulder just as the deafening crack of a gunshot ripped through the room.
The bullet shattered the heavy mahogany table where Daniel had been sitting a second before. Splinters rained down on them. Daniel wrapped his large frame around Emily, pressing her into the corner of the room, shielding her with his own body.
She was shaking violently. He could feel the rapid, terrifying thud of her heart against his arm.
“Stay down,” Daniel whispered, his voice dangerously calm. “Do not make a sound.”
Heavy footsteps crunched over the broken glass. The shooter was moving closer.
Daniel’s mind raced. His security team was stationed in the hallway. Why hadn’t they breached the door? The sound of the gunshot should have brought them flooding in.
“You can’t protect her, Daniel,” the voice slithered through the dark. It was synthesized, metallic, hiding the speaker’s true identity. “You couldn’t protect her then. You can’t protect her now.”
Another click of the hammer pulling back.
Daniel braced himself to attack blind. He had nothing but a butter knife he had grabbed off the floor.
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the dining room exploded inward.
Flashlights cut through the pitch black. Daniel’s head of security, a hulking veteran named Thomas, roared into the room, weapon drawn.
“Boss! Get down!” Thomas yelled.
The shooter didn’t hesitate. A dark figure wearing a tactical mask bolted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, firing two blind shots toward the door. Thomas ducked. The figure threw a heavy chair through the glass, shattering the window, and leaped out onto the fire escape.
The emergency lights flickered on, casting an eerie orange glow over the destroyed room.
Thomas rushed to the window, aiming out, but cursed. “He’s gone. Down the alley.”
Daniel slowly pulled away from Emily. He looked her over frantically, his hands trembling. “Are you hurt? Emily, talk to me. Did he hit you?”
Emily was pale, her dark eyes wide with shock, but she shook her head. “I’m… I’m okay. He missed.”
Daniel let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for two decades. He reached out to touch her cheek, but stopped himself, remembering she barely knew him. She was a waitress at a high-end restaurant who had just been told a billionaire was her father, only to be shot at seconds later.
“We have to get you out of here,” Daniel said, his CEO persona taking over. “Thomas, lock down the building. No one leaves. Get the car to the service elevator.”
“Already on it, sir,” Thomas said, tapping his earpiece. “But we have a problem. The hallway guards… they were drugged. Sedatives in their coffee. Whoever this was, they knew our protocols.”
Daniel’s blood turned to ice. Only someone in his inner circle knew the security protocols.
He looked down at the floor, right where the shooter had been standing. Amidst the shattered crystal and overturned chairs, something caught the orange emergency light.
A glint of gold.
Daniel walked over and knelt. He picked it up. It was heavy, cold, and familiar.
A vintage gold pocket watch. The glass face was cracked from the fall, the hands frozen at 9:15.
Daniel felt the air leave his lungs. He turned the watch over. Engraved on the back was a family crest. The Blackwood crest.
“Mr. Blackwood?” Emily asked, her voice trembling as she stepped closer. “What is it?”
Daniel couldn’t speak. This watch belonged to his younger brother, Richard. Richard, who had stood by him during the twenty years of searching. Richard, who had cried with him on the anniversary of Emily’s disappearance.
Had his own brother orchestrated the kidnapping to secure the family inheritance?
Emily looked down at the watch in Daniel’s hand. Her breath hitched.
The color completely drained from her face, leaving her looking like a ghost. She backed away, bumping into the wall.
“Where… where did you get that?” she whispered.
“The shooter dropped it,” Daniel said softly. “Emily, do you recognize this?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling harder now.
“That watch,” she breathed, her eyes locked on the cracked glass. “The man in the photograph you showed me… the man standing in the shadows?”
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“Yes?”
“He came to our apartment the night Rebecca died. He was holding that exact watch.” Emily looked up, tears spilling over her lashes. “He didn't just visit her, Mr. Blackwood. He killed her.”
