CHAPTER 2: The Boy Who Guarded the Locket
The people around them kept walking.
A taxi honked. A man in a dark coat brushed past without apologizing. Somewhere behind them, the revolving doors of Ellison Holdings glided open and shut, swallowing polished shoes and expensive perfume. But Victoria stood frozen, one hand on her son’s shoulder, the other pressed against her own ribs as if she could hold her heart in place.
The boy under the streetlamp tried to stand when he noticed her staring. He rose too quickly, winced, and sank back against the metal post. His legs were scraped in a pattern that did not come from one fall. His hoodie was frayed at the sleeves, the zipper broken, the hem dark with city grime.
Nathan took one step toward him.
Victoria caught his arm. “Stay with me.”
“He’s hurt,” Nathan said.
The homeless boy heard that. His eyes flicked to Nathan, then to Victoria, then to the street behind her. He looked like a child who had learned to measure exits before faces.
“I’m not asking for anything,” the boy said.
His voice was hoarse. Small. Older than it should have been.
Victoria swallowed. “What’s your name?”
The boy’s fingers tightened around the object beneath his hoodie. “Caleb.”
“Where are your parents, Caleb?”
A shadow passed across his face so fast Victoria almost missed it. “Gone.”
Nathan looked up at his mother. “Can we help him?”
Victoria wanted to say yes immediately. Once, before grief had made her cautious, she would have knelt in the street and wrapped that child in her coat. But the Ellison name attracted schemes. After Julian’s death, people had tried everything—fake relatives, forged letters, sob stories outside the estate gates. Her mother-in-law had drilled the lesson into her: Never let strangers near Nathan. Never let emotion make decisions for an Ellison heir.
Still, the boy’s eyes would not leave Nathan’s face.
Victoria reached into her handbag and pulled out folded bills. “Here. Please take this.”
Caleb stared at the money but did not reach.
“I don’t want your money,” he said.
Victoria’s hand froze in the air.
Caleb looked down, then slowly drew something from inside his hoodie. It was a round gold locket, old and scratched, hanging from a broken chain. He held it as if it were burning his palm.
“I just need to know,” he whispered, “if this belongs to you.”
Victoria’s body went cold.
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Because before Caleb opened it, before she saw the photographs inside, she recognized the locket.
Julian had bought it on the night their twins were born.
