Chapter 1 - The Ripped Paper
The divorce papers were less than six inches from Daniel Han’s hand when his seven-year-old daughter burst into the room screaming.
“No, Daddy!”
Daniel froze.
Across the enormous walnut desk in his study, his wife, Maya, lifted her tear-swollen eyes.
Neither of them had heard Lily running down the long, carpeted marble hallway of their Chicago mansion. Neither had heard the frantic footsteps of the night security officer calling softly after her, trying desperately to intercept her before she breached the heavy mahogany doors.
All they saw was their little girl in pink pajamas racing toward the desk as if somebody’s life depended on it.
In a way, somebody’s did.
Daniel instinctively reached for her, his heavy shoulders tensing.
“Lily—”
She bypassed his outstretched arms entirely. She grabbed the divorce papers first.
With both hands, her small fingers clutching the crisp legal bond paper, she tore them straight down the middle.
Maya gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
Daniel’s high-priced family attorney, a man who had negotiated treaties between rival syndicates and corporate boards without blinking, stood frozen beside the marble fireplace like a porcelain statue.
Lily tore the pages again.
And again.
White strips of legal text fluttered through the air like snow, settling softly across the polished Persian rug.
“Lily!”
Daniel’s voice had terrified grown men in federal courtrooms, corporate boardrooms, smuggling warehouses, and dark back rooms all over Chicago. It was a low, resonant tone that commanded absolute obedience.
His daughter didn’t flinch.
She stood planted firmly between her parents, shaking so badly that her bare feet nearly slipped on the scattered fragments of their legal separation.
Then she looked directly up at her father, her dark eyes flashing with a fierce, heartbreaking defiance.
“If you stop being married,” she whispered, her voice cracking in the quiet room, “which one of you am I supposed to lose?”
The room went dead silent.
Daniel Han had spent most of his forty years believing there was always an answer to every equation.
An answer to betrayal. An answer to danger. An answer to insurmountable debt. An answer to men who believed they were brave until they found themselves sitting across from him in the dark.
But he had no answer for his daughter.
Lily’s chin trembled, threatening to give way to tears, but she held her ground.
“And I know why Mommy thinks you don’t love her.”
Maya’s face changed, shifting from shock to sudden, sharp confusion.
Daniel slowly stood up from his leather chair, towering over the desk.
“What did you say?”
Lily reached slowly into the deep pocket of her fleece pajama pants.
She pulled out a small, crumpled, folded piece of printer paper.
“I heard Uncle Raymond talking on the phone in the garden yesterday,” she said softly.
Daniel stopped breathing.
May you like
Maya stared at him, her eyes widening as the color began to drain completely from her face.
And suddenly, the divorce papers on the floor were no longer the most dangerous thing in the room.
