The package arrives on a soft spring morning — the kind that should smell of safety, of domestic bliss and warm childhood. The sun spills through the windows in a lazy gold wash, and beyond the glass walls of the estate, the gardens sway with early daffodils. Birds pick at the soil, Leo's laughter echoes somewhere outside with his nanny.
A perfect day.
The kind of day that shatters too easily.
Emily is the one who finds the parcel. It sits on the polished entry table like a misplaced thought — ordinary, brown-papered, tied with a delicate ivory ribbon. No postmark. No courier signature. No origin.
Just a single handwritten label.
TO : LEO DRAKE-CHEN
In looping cursive, elegant. Feminine.
Emily freezes.
The air around her stills, too quiet. Even her heartbeat seems to pause, a suspended note of dread. She calls for Alexander, voice steady but tight.
He comes within seconds, because he always does when she calls. He takes one look at the package, his expression hardening.
