Chapter 1
Jackson did not let Leo’s feet touch the floor again that night.
The game room was covered in safety-glass fragments, broken billiard cues, poker chips, splintered wood, and pieces of the collapsed table.
Leo had been barefoot.
That alone made Jackson’s stomach turn.
He carried his son directly into the adjoining council room.
Seven men stood around the long table.
Men who had been arguing about money ten minutes earlier.
Nobody spoke now.
Jackson looked at his security chief.
“Owen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doctor.”
“Already coming.”
“Lock this wing.”
Several capos exchanged looks.
Jackson saw them.
“Nobody leaves until I know why Chad was standing over my son with a bat.”
One of the older men started to object.
Jackson looked at him.
The man reconsidered.
Leo had wrapped both arms around Jackson’s neck.
His breathing came in short, frightened bursts.
Jackson sat in a leather chair and kept the boy against his chest.
“You hurt anywhere?”
Leo shook his head.
“Did he hit you?”
Another shake.
“Did the glass cut you?”
“I don’t know.”
Jackson looked down.
There were no obvious cuts.
Then he noticed the emergency-call device still clenched in Leo’s fist.
“You pressed it?”
Leo nodded.
“How many times?”
“Two.”
Jackson looked toward Owen.
The security chief frowned.
“No alert came through.”
Jackson’s face changed.
That device had one purpose.
If Leo pressed and held the center button, security received his location immediately.
Jackson received the same alert on his phone.
Nothing had arrived.
“You’re sure?”
Owen was already checking his tablet.
“Completely.”
Leo whispered:
“I pressed hard.”
Jackson kissed the top of his head.
“I believe you.”
The estate physician arrived within minutes.
Leo had a small bruise on one elbow from hitting the wall and redness across one forearm.
No glass cuts.
No head injury.
No broken bones.
Physically, he was lucky.
The doctor still recommended observation and a child therapist because Leo had been threatened with a weapon.
Jackson agreed.
Chad, meanwhile, was being held in a downstairs office with his attorney on the way.
Jackson did not go to him.
Not yet.
He wanted to.
That was precisely why he stayed with Leo.
After the physician finished, Jackson asked one more question.
“Why were you in the game room?”
Leo rubbed his face against Jackson’s vest.
“Looking for blue car.”
A toy.
Jackson remembered it.
Leo had left a small blue race car near the poker table that afternoon.
“What happened when you went in?”
Leo became tense.
Jackson immediately stopped.
“You don’t have to tell me tonight.”
Leo looked at the emergency device.
Then whispered:
“Uncle Chad said I saw something.”
Jackson’s attention sharpened.
“What?”
Leo shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
That was all Jackson asked.
Later, after Leo fell asleep in Jackson’s bedroom with a security officer outside the hall, Owen returned.
He had the emergency-device logs.
Leo had told the truth.
The button was pressed at 8:17:14 p.m.
Again at 8:17:28.
Both signals reached the estate network.
Neither reached security.
Jackson looked up.
“Why?”
Owen turned the screen.
At 7:52 p.m., twenty-five minutes before Leo entered the game room, someone with administrator privileges had rerouted emergency alerts originating inside the game wing into a maintenance queue.
No audible alarm.
No bodyguard notification.
No message to Jackson.
The setting had been returned to normal at 8:23.
Six minutes after Jackson entered the room.
Jackson stared at the timestamps.
May you like
Chad had not simply lost his temper with a child.
Someone had taken steps beforehand to make sure a frightened child could call for help without anyone hearing him.
