Nicholas Ferraro had buried his younger brother eleven years earlier.

He remembered the rain.

He remembered the closed coffin.

He remembered standing beside his mother while she cried so hard that she could barely remain upright.

And he remembered the medical examiner explaining that the fire had left almost nothing recognizable.

Now, at 2:36 in the morning, a frightened little boy was sitting inside his warehouse claiming that Daniel Ferraro was alive.

Nicholas didn’t believe in miracles.

But he believed in lies.

And someone had been lying to him for eleven years.

“Stay with Caleb,” Nicholas told Audrey.

She was sitting in the back of his armored SUV, wrapped in his coat.

“No.”

“Audrey.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You can barely stand.”

“And that boy trusted me.”

Nicholas looked at her.

Her face was pale.

Her breathing was shallow.

But there was something in her eyes he recognized.

The same stubbornness that had made him fall in love with her.

He took her hand.

“Then you stay beside me.”

Twenty minutes later, they reached the warehouse.

Three black vehicles waited outside.

Caleb stood near the entrance.

His expression was grim.

“Where is Raines?” Nicholas demanded.

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“We found his coat, his phone, and blood on the floor. Somebody dragged him out through the loading entrance.”

Nicholas looked toward the office.

“And the boy?”

“Inside.”

Audrey moved first.

Nicholas followed.

The little boy sat on a wooden chair, clutching a worn stuffed rabbit.

He had dark hair.

Gray eyes.

And a small crescent-shaped scar beneath his chin.

Nicholas stopped.

Daniel had carried the same scar since childhood.

The boy looked at Audrey.

“You came.”

She knelt carefully.

“I promised I would.”

He threw his arms around her.

Nicholas watched silently.

Then the boy looked over her shoulder.

“Are you Nicholas?”

“Yes.”

The child studied his face.

“My dad said you’d look like him.”

Nicholas felt his throat tighten.

“Where is your dad?”

The boy reached into his jacket.

He removed a folded photograph.

Nicholas took it.

The picture showed a man standing beside a lake.

Older.

Thinner.

A beard covering his jaw.

But the eyes were unmistakable.

Daniel.

On the back of the photograph, someone had written:

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I DISAPPEARED, ASK YOUR FATHER WHAT HAPPENED ON OCTOBER 14.

Nicholas stared.

October 14.

The night of the fire.

Their father, Vincent Ferraro, had supposedly died of a stroke seven years earlier.

Nicholas folded the photograph.

“Who gave you this?”

“My dad.”

“Where is he?”

Eli’s lower lip trembled.

“They took him.”

“Who?”

The boy looked toward the door.

“The man who owns the river.”

Nicholas felt cold.

Gideon Shaw.

But something was wrong.

Shaw had only arrived in Philadelphia five years earlier.

How could he be connected to a fire from eleven years ago?

Before Nicholas could speak, Audrey swayed.

He caught her.

“Audrey?”

She pressed a hand against her chest.

“My heart…”

The monitor began emitting a rapid warning.

Nicholas lifted her into his arms.

“Call the ambulance!”

Caleb grabbed his phone.

Audrey clutched Nicholas’s collar.

“Listen to me.”

“Don’t talk.”

“Nicholas, the doctor said there was something unusual.”

“What?”

“He said the episodes might not be happening naturally.”

Nicholas froze.

Audrey struggled to breathe.

“He asked whether I’d been taking anything new.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing.”

She swallowed.

“But then I remembered…”

Her fingers tightened.

“The vitamins.”

Nicholas stared.

“What vitamins?”

“The ones your father used to send me.”

Nicholas’s entire body went rigid.

“My father is dead.”

Audrey looked at him through tears.

“I know.”

The ambulance siren sounded outside.

Then Eli spoke from behind them.

“My dad said Grandpa Vincent isn’t dead either.”

Nicholas slowly turned.

The boy was crying.

“He said Grandpa is the reason everyone keeps disappearing.”

At that exact moment, Caleb’s phone lit up.

A message from an unknown number.

Nicholas took it.

There was a photograph attached.

Audrey.

Sleeping in their penthouse bedroom.

Taken less than twenty-four hours earlier.

Beneath it were six words.

YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT HER ALONE.

Nicholas looked toward the warehouse entrance.

Someone had been inside his home.

Someone had touched his wife.

And the most frightening possibility was no longer that his father had returned from the dead.

It was that his father had never left.