Chapter 2

"Who is he? What inhuman thing did he do?"

I stared at those words in the diary—"He's not human."

My fingers wouldn't stop trembling. My fingertips pressed so hard they nearly tore through the thin photo.

"Mom, what's wrong? Why aren't you sleeping?"

My son Adrian rubbed his sleepy eyes and pushed open my bedroom door.

"Adrian, go get dressed."

I snapped the diary shut, my voice hoarse like I'd swallowed sand.

"Where are we going this late?"

Adrian looked at me, confused.

"New York."

I stood up and grabbed my jacket from the couch.

"To find your sister!"

Adrian froze for a moment, then panic flashed in his eyes.

"Did something happen to Aria?"

He didn't ask another question. He just turned and went to grab his backpack.

The 3 AM flight. The entire cabin was so quiet it made me anxious.

I stared out at the pitch-black sky.

All I could think about was Aria's trembling voice at the end of our last call. "Mom, I miss you so much."

That was the only time she hadn't forced a smile since the Wilsons took her away.

The plane landed in New York just as dawn broke.

I pulled out my phone and sent Aria a message.

"I have some work that suddenly brought me to New York. Mind if I stop by to see you?"

My heart was in my throat.

A full half hour passed before she replied with a single line.

"Oh Mom, bad timing. My parents took me on vacation. We're not in New York right now."

I looked at those words, my hands and feet going ice cold.

She didn't even send an emoji. That wasn't like Aria at all.

"Mom, what did Aria say?"

Adrian leaned over to look at the screen, his brow instantly furrowing.

"She says she's not in New York."

I pocketed my phone and strode toward the exit, dragging my suitcase.

"So where are we going now?"

"To the Wilson estate."

The Wilsons lived in New York's most exclusive neighborhood.

Their standalone villa halfway up the hill had its gates shut tight.

The security was intense. They wouldn't let outsiders in.

Adrian and I stored our luggage at a convenience store at the bottom of the hill and changed into plain workout clothes.

Following the landscaped perimeter of the estate, we circled around to the back wall of the Wilson property.

There was a bamboo grove here that didn't get much foot traffic.

I crouched in the grass, eyes fixed on the closed wrought-iron back gate.

"Mom, is Aria really in there?"

Adrian kept his voice low, his fists already clenched tight enough to crack.

"Wait here. I'll go ask around."

I spotted a middle-aged woman in a cleaning uniform walking past with a bag of trash.

I immediately approached her.

"Excuse me, did the Wilsons go on vacation today?"

The cleaner looked startled and sized me up.

"Vacation? No, the whole family's inside."

My heart dropped.

Aria had lied. Or someone had been lying with her phone.

"I bet the Wilsons are thrilled to have found their biological daughter. They must spoil her rotten, right?"

I forced a smile, trying to sound casual.

The cleaner looked around, then curled her lip.

"Spoil her? That house is a living hell!"

My blood turned to ice. "What do you mean?"

I pulled two hundred dollars from my pocket and discreetly slipped it into the cleaner's glove.

Her eyes lit up and her voice dropped even lower.

"You don't know—that son of theirs, Blake, he's got something wrong with his head."

"He used to enjoy torturing small animals. When he got bored of that, he started torturing people."

"Several housekeepers have been beaten so badly they quit!"

I dug my nails into my palm, forcing my voice to stay steady.

"What about their biological daughter?"

The cleaner sighed and shook her head.

"They say they brought her back to live the good life, but really she's just a toy for that psycho!"

"Just yesterday I heard her screaming in the yard. They said she fell down the stairs."

"Mrs. Elena even yelled at her for not watching where she was going and ruining the new carpet."

My head erupted with a deafening buzz, like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my skull.

My baby, the one I'd raised for eighteen years, the one I couldn't even bring myself to yell at—in their house, she'd become a plaything for a lunatic?

"I'm gonna go in there and kill them!"

Adrian had crept up beside me, his eyes bloodshot, already lifting his leg to kick down the door.

"Get back here!"

I grabbed him around the waist and dragged him into the bamboo grove.

"Mom! Let me go! They're hurting Aria!"

Adrian struggled violently, tears streaming down his face.

Just then, a piercing siren wailed closer and closer.

Not a police car—an ambulance!

The ambulance screeched to a stop at the Wilson estate's front gate.

I shoved Adrian aside and looked over.