Chapter 5 - The Downtown Arrival
The tinted windows of the black town car offered a quiet barrier against the chaotic morning rush of Madison Avenue. Lily sat in the leather seat beside me, her small nose pressed against the glass as yellow cabs and towering glass monoliths rushed past in a blur of gray and steel. She had traded her pale pink party dress for a soft cream-colored sweater and leggings that Mrs. Gable had managed to source from an emergency supply stash, but the pink hair bow remained stubbornly pinned in her blonde curls.
"Are we going to your office?" she asked, not turning her head away from the window.
"We are," I replied, keeping my hands folded over the silver head of my cane resting between my knees. "It's a tall building. Very noisy. Stay close to me the entire time."
"I always stay close," she said simply, finally looking up at me with a trusting smile.
When the car slid into the subterranean garage of the foundation tower, Vance was already out holding the door. The private elevator whisked us past forty floors of corporate bureaucracy directly to the executive penthouse level. As the polished steel doors slid open, my executive assistant, Sarah, looked up from her mahogany desk with a clipboard ready, only to freeze mid-sentence as Lily stepped out right beside me, holding onto the hem of my black suit jacket.
"Mr. Vance," Sarah stammered, her eyes darting from the child to my stern face. "I wasn't informed we had a... visitor today."
"Plans change, Sarah," I said, striding past her toward my private office. "Cancel the ten o'clock media briefing. Move the financial audit review to two this afternoon. And get someone down to the lobby reception. I'm expecting a report."
Before Sarah could process the command, the intercom on her desk buzzed sharply. She picked up the receiver, listened for three seconds, and looked up at me with a pale, stricken expression.
"Sir... you need to take this call. Downstairs security just detained a woman at the front reception desk. She's hysterical. She claims... she claims her daughter was taken from her yesterday, and she saw foundation security footage placing the child here."
I stopped dead in my tracks. The ambient hum of the penthouse office seemed to drop away entirely.
May you like
"Name?" I demanded, my voice cutting through the quiet.
Sarah swallowed hard, reading the note from the lobby guard. "Clara Evans. She says she's Lily's mother."
