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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Two little boys showed up at my Chicago headquarters asking for me. The older one said, \u201cMom told us to find you.\u201d Then I saw his eyes, looked at his little brother, and realized both boys had the exact same eyes as me.<\/p>\n
My name is Damian Ashford.<\/p>\n
To the public, I was the billionaire chairman of Ashford Holdings.<\/p>\n
To the men who actually controlled Chicago after midnight, I was something else entirely.<\/p>\n
I was the head of the Ashford crime family, the most powerful mafia organization in the city.<\/p>\n
Politicians returned my calls.<\/p>\n
Union bosses knew my name.<\/p>\n
Men who frightened everyone else lowered their voices when they entered my office.<\/p>\n
For years, I had believed there was almost nothing left in Chicago capable of surprising me.<\/p>\n
Then two little boys walked into my headquarters on a cold September morning and turned six years of certainty into one terrifying question.<\/p>\n
The call came while I was working alone in my office high above downtown Chicago.<\/p>\n
My executive assistant, Lauren Pierce, was downstairs, and the hesitation in her usually unshakable voice immediately made me close the report on my laptop.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Ashford, there are two young boys in the lobby asking to speak with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFind their parents,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Lauren went quiet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the problem. They told reception their mother sent them here.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stopped typing and leaned back in my chair.<\/p>\n
Lauren had worked beside me for eight years, surviving furious investors, complicated lawsuits, sudden resignations, and negotiations involving more money than most people would see in several lifetimes.<\/p>\n
She had also watched armed men enter my building making threats and leave considerably quieter than they had arrived.<\/p>\n
Nothing rattled her.<\/p>\n
Something had rattled her now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s their mother?\u201d<\/p>\n
Another pause followed, longer this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHannah Mercer.\u201d<\/p>\n
My hand froze above the keyboard.<\/p>\n
For almost six years, nobody had spoken Hannah\u2019s name to me.<\/p>\n
Once, she had been the woman I thought I would marry.<\/p>\n
I had imagined everything with her.<\/p>\n
A house filled with noise. Children racing through hallways, lazy Sunday mornings, Christmas mornings, arguments we would eventually laugh about, and the quiet comfort of growing old beside someone who knew every version of me.<\/p>\n
Then Hannah vanished from my life.<\/p>\n
Everything I was told afterward pointed toward the same painful explanation.<\/p>\n
She had chosen to leave me, wanted nothing more to do with our relationship, and had deliberately walked away from the future we planned.<\/p>\n
For six years, I forced myself to believe it.<\/p>\n
Then two children appeared downstairs.<\/p>\n
I closed my laptop and took the private elevator to the lobby.<\/p>\n
When the doors opened, I saw them immediately beside the reception desk.<\/p>\n
The older boy looked around seven, while his younger brother couldn\u2019t have been more than six.<\/p>\n
A worn green backpack hung from the older boy\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n
His little brother hugged an old stuffed fox against his chest, its faded fur telling me that toy had probably comforted him through more nights than anyone knew.<\/p>\n
Their clothes were neat but heavily worn.<\/p>\n
Their sneakers were painfully thin for Chicago\u2019s chilly September weather.<\/p>\n
Two of my security men stood several feet away.<\/p>\n
Neither had approached them.<\/p>\n
The older boy noticed me.<\/p>\n
His shoulders stiffened, and he stared directly at my face as if comparing me to a photograph he had memorized.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you Mr. Ashford?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He swallowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Noah. That\u2019s my brother, Caleb.\u201d<\/p>\n
The smaller boy moved behind him.<\/p>\n
Then Noah said quietly, \u201cOur mom told us to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n
My pulse quickened.<\/p>\n
\u201cHannah?\u201d<\/p>\n
Both boys nodded.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n
Then Noah lifted his face completely toward mine.<\/p>\n
That was when I saw his eyes.<\/p>\n
Gray-green.<\/p>\n
Not simply similar to mine, but the same strange mixture of colors I had inherited from my father.<\/p>\n
My attention snapped toward Caleb.<\/p>\n
He had them too.<\/p>\n
The lobby seemed to fall silent around me.<\/p>\n
Behind me stood men who had seen me negotiate with some of the most dangerous people in Chicago without blinking.<\/p>\n
But suddenly none of that mattered.<\/p>\n
Six years of memories were rearranging themselves inside my head.<\/p>\n
Hannah had disappeared almost six years earlier.<\/p>\n
And standing directly in front of me were two boys whose ages suddenly made that timeline impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n
Noah tightened his hand around the strap of his backpack.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom said there\u2019s something you need to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
My throat went dry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
Two little boys showed up at my Chicago headquarters asking for me. The older one said, \u201cMom told us to find you.\u201d Then I saw his eyes, looked at his … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8405,"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8403\/revisions\/8405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechapterstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}