Chapter 2 - The Woman in Room 614Grant Mercer had purchased companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars without his hands shaking.
The second was that Mommy was lying on the kitchen floor.
“Mommy?”
Ellie stood barefoot beside the refrigerator, still wearing pink pajamas covered in tiny yellow stars.
Her twin brother, Noah, was sitting under the kitchen table with his stuffed blue elephant pressed against his chest.
“Mommy sleeping?” he whispered.
Ellie shook her head.
Mommy never slept on the kitchen floor.
Twenty-eight-year-old Hannah Dawson lay on her side near the counter, one hand stretched toward an overturned glass of water. Her blonde hair covered half her face. A grocery bag had fallen beside her, spilling apples and a loaf of bread across the tile.
One apple had rolled beneath the table.
Noah picked it up.
“Mommy?”
No answer.
Ellie touched Hannah’s shoulder.
“Wake up.”
Nothing.
She pushed harder.
“Mommy, Noah crying.”
Still nothing.
Noah’s lower lip trembled.
“I want Mommy.”
Ellie wanted Mommy too.
But Ellie had learned something during the past year that no three-year-old should have needed to learn.
When Mommy was scared, Ellie tried not to be.
She climbed onto a kitchen chair and reached for the phone Hannah had left beside the microwave.
Hannah had taught the twins one number.
But three-year-old fingers did not always do what they were told.
Ellie pressed the wrong buttons.
Across downtown Chicago, forty-two-year-old billionaire investor Grant Mercer was seven minutes away from signing the biggest deal of his career.
Eight million dollars would change hands before lunch.
Maybe more later.
Grant sat at the head of a glass conference table on the forty-first floor of Mercer Capital, surrounded by attorneys, bankers, and executives who had spent six months negotiating every sentence of the acquisition agreement.
His chief attorney slid the final documents toward him.
“All we need is your signature.”
Grant reached for his pen.
His phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
He ignored it.
The phone stopped.
Then rang again.
Grant frowned.
Only a handful of people had his private number.
He declined the call.
Three seconds later, it rang a third time.
“Persistent,” one executive joked.
Grant almost switched the phone off.
Instead, something made him answer.
“Grant Mercer.”
Silence.
Then breathing.
Small breathing.
A child sniffled.
Grant straightened.
“Hello?”
A tiny voice said, “Mister?”
Grant glanced at the people around the table.
“Who is this?”
“My mommy won’t wake up.”
The pen slipped from Grant’s fingers.
Nobody in the conference room spoke.
Grant stood.
“What did you say?”
“My mommy’s on the floor.”
The child’s voice shook.
“My brother is crying.”
Grant’s chest tightened.
“How old are you?”
“Three.”
Every person around the table was watching him now.
Grant walked toward the windows.
“What’s your name?”
“Ellie.”
“Okay, Ellie. Listen carefully. Is your mommy breathing?”
A pause.
“I don’t know.”
Grant closed his eyes.
Eleven years earlier, his own younger sister had died alone in an apartment after collapsing from an undiagnosed heart condition.
Her five-year-old son had been there.
By the time anyone found them, it had been too late.
Grant had spent more than a decade wondering how different everything might have been if someone had answered a phone.
Now he could hear a little boy crying in the background.
“Ellie, I need you to stay with me.”
“My mommy needs help.”
“Yes. And we’re going to get her help.”
His attorney approached.
“Grant, the sellers have another meeting in twenty minutes.”
Grant raised one hand without looking at him.
“Cancel it.”
The attorney blinked.
“You can’t cancel. We’ve got eight million—”
“I said cancel it.”
Grant turned away.
“Ellie, do you know your address?”
“No.”
“Do you know the name of your street?”
“No.”
Grant’s pulse accelerated.
“Look around. Is there anything with writing on it? A letter? A box?”
Ellie became quiet.
Grant could hear her moving.
“My cereal says tiger.”
Despite everything, Grant nearly laughed.
“Good job. But we need something Mommy gets in the mail.”
Noah started screaming.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
Ellie began crying too.
Grant’s voice softened.
“Ellie. Stay with me. You are doing an amazing job.”
He snapped his fingers toward his assistant and mouthed, Trace the call.
She immediately began typing.
“What can you see outside?”
“Cars.”
“What else?”
“A red store.”
“Can you see a sign?”
“I see… Manny’s.”
Grant’s assistant looked up.
She typed rapidly.
“There are fourteen businesses called Manny’s in the metro area,” she whispered.
Grant kept Ellie talking.
“Is Mommy still on the floor?”
“Yes.”
“Is the door locked?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you reach it?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Don’t go outside. Just unlock it if you can.”
“I’m not allowed.”
Grant swallowed.
“Mommy would want you to unlock it so the helpers can come inside.”
Another long pause.
Then Grant heard the scrape of a chair across hardwood.
His assistant suddenly pointed at her screen.
“Manny’s Market. West Addison. Residential buildings directly across the street.”
Grant grabbed his jacket.
“Call 911. Give them everything.”
His attorney stepped into his path.
“Grant, if you walk out now, Henderson’s group can terminate negotiations.”
“Then they terminate.”
“You could lose millions.”
Grant pushed past him.
On the phone, Ellie whispered, “Mister?”
“I’m here.”
“Are you coming?”
Grant stopped.
It was an absurd question.
He didn’t know this child.
He didn’t know her mother.
An ambulance would arrive faster than he could.
He should stay.
He should sign the contract.
He should let professionals handle it.
Then Noah’s frightened voice came through the speaker.
“Please help my mommy.”
Grant looked at the unsigned eight-million-dollar agreement.
And suddenly it meant absolutely nothing.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m coming.”
Twenty-three minutes later, Grant’s black SUV stopped behind an ambulance outside a modest brick apartment building.
Paramedics were already running upstairs.
Grant followed.
He reached apartment 3B just as a firefighter carried Noah into the hallway.
The boy was crying so hard he could barely breathe.
Ellie stood near the doorway clutching the phone with both hands.
When she saw Grant still holding his own phone, her eyes widened.
“Mister?”
Grant crouched.
“Ellie?”
She ran toward him.
Grant barely had time to react before the tiny girl wrapped both arms around his neck.
“They’re taking Mommy.”
Behind her, paramedics lifted Hannah onto a stretcher.
Grant saw her face for the first time.
Pale.
Motionless.
Young.
Far too young.
One paramedic shouted, “Blood pressure dropping!”
They hurried toward the stairs.
Grant picked Ellie up while another firefighter carried Noah.
“Where’s their father?” Grant asked.
The building manager shook her head.
“Haven’t seen him in months.”
Grant looked toward the ambulance.
“What hospital?”
“St. Catherine’s.”
Ellie buried her face against his shoulder.
“Don’t let Mommy die.”
Grant froze.
Eleven years disappeared.
For one second, he was standing outside another apartment, listening to someone tell him his sister was already gone.
He tightened his arms around Ellie.
“I’m staying with you until we know she’s okay.”
Grant had no idea that Hannah Dawson’s collapse was not an accident.
He had no idea that someone had spent months making sure she became exhausted, isolated, and desperate.
And he certainly had no idea that the father of the frightened twins in his arms was a man Grant already knew.
May you like
A man who, at that exact moment, was sitting in Grant’s abandoned conference room.
Waiting to steal the eight-million-dollar deal Grant had just walked away from.
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