Chapter 1 - The Emergency Contact They Had Never Met
The pain struck behind my right eye while I was reviewing the final structural plan for Atlas Tower.
One moment I was standing over the drafting table, checking the load calculations beside the eastern foundation wall.
The next, the lines began moving.
My fingers tightened around the edge of the table. The room tilted, and my coffee mug slipped from my hand.
It shattered beside my shoes.
I tried calling for Hazel and Iris.
No sound came out.
My knees hit the hardwood floor first. Then my shoulder. Then the side of my face.
The last thing I saw was the home office door opening.
“Mommy?”
Hazel’s voice sounded impossibly far away.
Both girls ran toward me in their cream dinner dresses. We had planned to attend their school’s winter concert after I completed one final revision.
Instead, I lay motionless among scattered blueprints.
Iris picked up the office phone and dialed emergency services. Hazel shook my shoulder, then pressed two fingers against my neck the way I had taught them during a first aid lesson.
“She is breathing,” Hazel cried. “I think she is breathing.”
The dispatcher instructed Iris to unlock the front door and keep me on my side.
Hazel found my mobile phone beneath the drafting table.
The screen recognized her face because I had added both girls to the emergency settings years earlier.
One name appeared above every other contact.
GRIFFIN DRAKE.
Hazel had never met him.
She pressed the call button anyway.
Three rings passed.
A man answered with a tired voice.
“Sloan?”
“My mommy fell down.”
Everything about him changed.
“Who is this?”
“Hazel.”
“Hazel, listen carefully. Is your mother breathing?”
“Yes, but she will not wake up.”
“Did you call 911?”
“My sister is talking to them.”
“Good. Unlock the door and stay beside your mother. What is your address?”
Hazel gave it to him.
Iris returned from the front hall.
“The ambulance is coming.”
The man remained on the phone.
“Tell me your sister’s name.”
“Iris.”
A pause followed.
“Are you twins?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Eight.”
Another pause.
This one lasted longer.
“When is your birthday?”
“December fourteenth.”
Hazel heard movement on the other end. A chair struck something. A door slammed.
“Are you Griffin?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why are you coming?”
His breathing became uneven.
“Because your mother once meant everything to me.”
An ambulance siren rose outside.
Paramedics entered the office and moved the girls back while they assessed me.
One called for immediate neurological transport.
Another found a weak pulse and abnormal pupil response.
Hazel still held the phone.
Griffin spoke to her until a child protection officer arrived.
Then the line disconnected.
Across Seattle, Griffin Drake left a private strategy meeting at Drake Systems headquarters. His security team later said he ignored the waiting car, ran across the rooftop landing platform, and ordered the company helicopter into the air before anyone received clearance from his office.
He reached my building minutes after the ambulance departed.
Hazel and Iris waited with Officer Jenna Cole inside the living room.
The helicopter’s blades shook the windows as Griffin entered.
He wore a fitted black shirt, dark trousers, and an expression the girls would later describe as frightened anger.
Hazel stared at him.
Iris did too.
They had his eyes.
Not simply the same color.
The same dark ring around the iris. The same slight lift at the outer corner. The same way their attention narrowed when something did not make sense.
Griffin stopped several feet away.
Neither side spoke.
Then Iris held up a photograph she had found beneath the blueprints.
It showed Griffin and me standing beside a half finished waterfront pavilion nine years earlier.
His arm was around my waist.
I was laughing at something outside the frame.
On the back, I had written one sentence.
The only man I ever trusted before I learned what trust costs.
Iris held the photograph beside Griffin’s face.
“Mister, are you our daddy?”
His hand began shaking.
Before he could answer, Officer Cole’s radio sounded.
The hospital requested permission to perform emergency brain surgery. I had no available relative listed.
The emergency contact field named Griffin.
He looked at the officer.
“Take me there.”
Hazel stepped in front of him.
“Mom keeps another number in her desk.”
Officer Cole opened the top drawer.
Inside was a sealed envelope addressed to Griffin.
He tore it open.
Griffin,
If the girls ever call you, something has gone wrong. Protect them before you ask why I left. Do not let your father near the Atlas plans.
Griffin read the message twice.
Then the building security alarm sounded.
Someone had entered my office using a valid architectural firm access code.
A figure wearing a maintenance jacket appeared briefly on the hallway camera.
May you like
The person walked directly toward the drafting table and began collecting the blueprints that had fallen around my body.
Continue to the next part: Griffin must protect the twins while someone searches Sloan’s office for the Atlas Tower plans she hid before collapsing.
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