The First Night in the Tower
The travel from Alexander’s corporate office, Sky Tower to Alexander’s penthouse, 50th floor consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The elevator car was all brushed steel and soft amber light, the kind of quiet luxury that whispered money without shouting. Cassidy stood with her back against the wall, Jace pressed close to her side, his small fingers tangled in the fabric of her jacket. Alexander stood at the front, one hand braced against the polished brass rail, his reflection fractured across the mirrored panels.
Jace watched the floor numbers climb. Forty-two. Forty-four. Forty-six.
“How high does it go?” he asked, his voice carrying that thin, reedy quality it got when he was trying to be brave.
“Fifty-two,” Alexander said. “But we’re on fifty. Best view in the building.”
Cassidy’s stomach dropped. She’d never liked heights. Never liked the way the ground fell away, leaving you suspended in nothing but glass and steel and the thin promise of engineering.
The elevator chimed. Doors slid open.
The penthouse stretched before them, a cathedral of open space and floor-to-ceiling windows that swallowed the Manhattan skyline. The lights of the city bled across the glass like scattered jewels, and far below, the streets crawled with headlights, tiny and distant and meaningless. The furniture was low and modern—cream leather, dark wood, a marble island in the kitchen that could have seated ten. Everything smelled clean. Sterile. Like a hotel room no one had ever lived in.
Jace stepped forward before she could stop him. His sneakers squeaked against the polished concrete floors as he pressed both hands to the window, his breath fogging the glass.
“Mom. *Mom.* Look.”
She forced a smile. “I see, baby.”
Alexander moved past her, setting a leather duffel on the kitchen counter. “Three bedrooms. Master suite has its own terrace. The other two are connected by a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. Jace can take whichever one he wants.”
“I get to choose?” Jace spun around, his eyes wide. “Really?”
“Really.”
He was already gone, a blur of energy and curiosity, disappearing down the hallway. Cassidy heard a door open, then a delighted gasp.
“*Mom! This bed is huge!*”
She didn’t answer. She was watching Alexander unload the duffel—a laptop, a tablet, a slim folder she didn’t recognize. His movements were efficient, deliberate. A man who had learned to pack light because he’d never stayed anywhere long enough to unpack.
“You have a guest room for Petra?” she asked.
He didn’t look up. “She can have the other bedroom. Or the couch. The couch is Italian leather and cost more than most people’s rent, so she won’t be roughing it.”
Cassidy almost laughed. Almost. But the humor died in her throat when she looked at the space around her—at the clean lines and the cold beauty and the complete absence of anything that looked like *home*.
“You live here alone?”
“I work here alone,” he corrected. “I sleep here when I remember to.”
She didn’t ask what that meant. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Thirty minutes later, Jace had claimed the smallest bedroom—the one with the window that faced the river—and had spread his meager collection of belongings across the floor. A worn backpack. A tablet with a cracked screen. The stuffed dinosaur he’d slept with since he was two, its fabric so threadbare the stuffing showed through.
Alexander appeared in the doorway, a controller in each hand. “You play *Nexus Wars*?”
Jace’s head snapped up. “You have a console?”
“Full setup in the living room. Seventy-inch screen. Surround sound.” Alexander tossed one of the controllers to him, and Jace caught it with the reflexive grace of a kid who’d learned to grab things before they hit the ground. “But I should warn you—I’m undefeated.”
“No you’re not.”
“Wanna bet?”
Cassidy watched from the kitchen island as they set up the game, the opening cinematic washing the room in blue light. Jace sat cross-legged on the floor, his tongue poking out in concentration as he navigated the menu. Alexander lowered himself onto the couch behind him, elbows resting on his knees, eyes tracking the screen.
They were strangers playing a video game at midnight. But they moved in rhythm, their voices overlapping as they shouted instructions and insults, the sound of a bond being built from nothing but a screen and two controllers.
Jace laughed. It was a real laugh, the kind that came from deep in his chest, the kind she hadn’t heard in weeks.
Cassidy pressed her palm against the cold marble and felt her heart crack.
She wanted to be happy. She wanted to be grateful. But all she could see was the space Alexander had filled in eight years of absence, the way Jace looked at him like he was something *new*, something exciting, something worth trusting. And all she could feel was the guilt, heavy and hot and corrosive, for having kept them apart in the first place.
She had told herself it was protection. She had told herself it was survival.
But watching them now, she wasn’t sure which version of the story she believed anymore.
The doorbell rang.
Cassidy flinched. Alexander was already on his feet, crossing the room in four long strides, his hand moving to a panel on the wall. A monitor flickered to life, showing the hallway outside the penthouse door.
Petra stood there, holding a bottle of wine and wearing a look of barely contained anxiety.
“She’s clean,” Alexander said, tapping a code into the panel. “Reid cleared her an hour ago.”
The door swung open.
Petra stepped inside, took one look at Cassidy, and said, “You look like hell. Here. Drink this.”
She thrust the bottle into Cassidy’s hands and pulled her into a hug so tight it stole her breath.
“I’m okay,” Cassidy said, her voice muffled against Petra’s shoulder.
“You’re a terrible liar. Always have been.” Petra pulled back, her gaze sweeping the penthouse with barely concealed awe. “Holy *shit*. This is where he lives? I thought you said he was a consultant.”
“He is a consultant.”
“For who? Royal families?”
Alexander cleared his throat. “More or less.”
Petra’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t push. Instead, she grabbed the wine bottle out of Cassidy’s hands, found a corkscrew in the kitchen drawer with surprising accuracy, and poured three glasses.
“Jace,” she called. “Come say hi before I drink all your mother’s wine and pass out on this absurdly expensive couch.”
Jace appeared in the hallway, his controller hanging at his side. “Aunt Petra. You came.”
“Of course I came. Someone has to make sure your mom doesn’t burn this place down with her anxious energy.” She knelt down, ruffling his hair. “How are you doing, kid?”
“Good.” He glanced back at the living room, at the paused game on the screen. “Alexander is teaching me how to counter the sniper build. He says most players are predictable if you watch their movement patterns.”
“Does he now.” Petra’s voice was flat, but her eyes found Cassidy’s, and there was a question in them that Cassidy couldn’t answer.
They drank the wine. They ordered food. Jace and Alexander finished two rounds of *Nexus Wars*—Alexander won the first, Jace won the second by a narrow margin that Alexander claimed was “beginner’s luck.” Jace grinned like he’d conquered an empire.
And then, at two in the morning, Jace fell asleep on the floor, his head resting on his outstretched arm, the controller still clutched in his hand.
Cassidy moved to pick him up, but Alexander was already there. He lifted Jace with practiced ease, cradling him against his chest as if he’d done it a thousand times. The boy stirred, murmured something unintelligible, and settled.
Alexander carried him to the bedroom. Cassidy followed, standing in the doorway as he laid Jace on the bed, pulled the covers up to his chin, and stood there for a moment, looking down at the child who shared his eyes and his jaw and the shape of his sleeping mouth.
She didn’t know what to say. So she said nothing.
When Alexander stepped back into the hallway, Petra had already retreated to the guest room, leaving them alone in the dim, quiet space of the penthouse. The city hummed beyond the glass. A siren wailed somewhere in the distance, faint and fading.
“We need to talk,” Cassidy said.
“I know.”
“Not about the Whitmores. Not about the security.” She swallowed, the words scraping against her throat. “About that night.”
Alexander’s face went still. Not angry. Not surprised. Just… still. As if he’d known this was coming and had been waiting for it to arrive.
“The night after graduation,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
They moved to the living room. She sat on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped between her knees. He stood by the window, his silhouette framed against the glittering city.
She remembered the night in flashes. The bonfire on the beach. The taste of cheap beer and salt air. The way he’d looked at her under the moon, like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing. They’d known each other their whole lives—neighborhood kids, high school sweethearts, the couple everyone assumed would make it. And then his father had offered him a future, one that came with a handshake deal and a signed contract and a price tag Cassidy couldn’t match.
She hadn’t known she was pregnant until three weeks after he’d left for college.
“You didn’t answer my calls,” she said. “I tried. For two months, I tried.”
“I never got them.” His voice was quiet, measured. “My father had my phone rerouted. Every message, every email, every letter. He told me you’d moved on. That you’d gotten involved with someone else.”
“That’s not true.”
“I know.” He turned to face her, and she saw the weight of eight years in his eyes. “I figured it out eventually. But by then, you were gone. You left the city. You didn’t leave a forwarding address. You changed your name—no, don’t look at me like that. I know about the name change. I had Reid dig it up the same night I saw you in that apartment.”
“Then why didn’t you find me?”
“Because I thought you didn’t want to be found.”
The silence stretched between them, thin and fragile and full of all the things they couldn’t take back.
“I wanted to tell you,” she whispered. “Every single day, I wanted to tell you. But I was scared. Your family—they would have taken him. They would have used him. And I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you made the choice for both of us.”
“Yes.”
He crossed the room, stopping in front of her. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes—his jaw was tight, his hands were shaking.
“I spent five years looking for you,” he said. “Five years thinking I’d done something wrong. That you’d hated me. That I’d pushed you away.”
“Alexander—”
“I never stopped loving you, Cassidy.” His voice cracked on her name. “But I don’t know if I can ever trust you again.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but she never got the chance.
The alarm on his phone blared—a sharp, discordant tone that cut through the stillness like a blade. He was already reaching for it, his face shifting from wounded to alert in a fraction of a second.
“Reid,” he said.
A beat. Then his voice again, controlled and cold.
“I’ve got a ping from the safe house. Motion sensor, east side. Footprints in the dirt, fresh. And the drone tracking system just flagged three signals within a two-block radius.”
Cassidy stood. Her blood went cold.
“They found us.”
Alexander’s hand closed around her wrist, his grip firm but not painful. “Pack a bag. Grab Jace. We’re moving.”
She didn’t argue. She didn’t hesitate.
But as she turned toward the hallway, she heard it—soft, muffled, barely audible over the hum of the city.
Footsteps. Stopping outside the door.