CHAPTER 2 — The Question That Was Never Spoken
Dominic Kincaid did not look at Claire when he spoke.
He stared instead at the paper on his desk, as if the words on it were more dangerous than the woman standing in his study.
“Do you know what my son did after you put him to bed?”
Claire didn’t answer immediately.
Because something in his voice was wrong.
Not angry.
Not cold.
Worse.
Controlled.
She tightened her fingers around the edge of her coat. “He slept.”
Dominic let out a short breath that wasn’t a laugh. “No.”
He finally looked up.
And Claire felt it immediately—that shift again. Like a room deciding whether it belonged to her or whether she had simply been allowed inside it temporarily.
“He went to the security room,” Dominic said.
Claire frowned. “That’s not possible.”
“It is,” Miles said quietly from the door. “We checked the logs.”
That made her stomach drop.
Dominic pushed a tablet across the desk.
The screen lit up.
A hallway.
Noah.
Barefoot.
Dragging his stuffed fox.
Walking with the certainty of a child who had done this before.
Claire’s throat tightened. “He’s never—”
“He did last night,” Dominic interrupted. “At 2:13 a.m.”
The footage showed Noah standing in front of a camera terminal.
Tiny fingers.
Too small for the keyboard.
And yet—
He typed.
Claire leaned closer despite herself. “What is he doing?”
Miles answered instead. “He accessed archived footage.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“And he didn’t stop there,” Miles continued. “He pulled a file from five years ago.”
Claire’s breath caught.
Five years ago.
Miranda Kincaid.
The accident.
Dominic’s voice went lower. “Show her.”
The video changed.
Rain.
Highway lights.
A car spinning.
Then static.
And then—
47 seconds missing.
Claire stepped back instinctively. “That’s corrupted data.”
“No,” Dominic said.
His voice was almost quiet now.
“It was erased.”
Silence hit the room like a physical force.
Claire looked between them. “By who?”
No one answered immediately.
Because the answer was sitting somewhere inside the house.
Dominic stood slowly.
“For two years,” he said, “I told myself my son stopped speaking because of trauma.”
He turned toward the window.
But his reflection stayed in the glass.
Watching her.
“Now I’m wondering if he stopped speaking,” Dominic continued, “because he was the only witness left who remembered what actually happened.”
Claire felt the room tilt slightly.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
Miles finally spoke again. “Unless someone taught him to forget.”
That sentence changed everything.
Because it implied intention.
Training.
Control.
And children did not erase themselves.
Someone else did it for them.
A sharp knock interrupted the silence.
A housekeeper appeared at the door, pale.
“Sir… Noah is awake.”
Dominic didn’t move immediately.
For the first time since Claire had met him, he looked uncertain.
Not weak.
Not broken.
But calculating something that no longer obeyed him.
He finally spoke.
“Bring him to me.”
The housekeeper hesitated.
Claire stepped forward without thinking. “No.”
Three heads turned toward her.
Even Miles looked surprised.
Claire swallowed. “Don’t bring him here like he’s evidence.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “He is my son.”
“And he is not a suspect,” she shot back.
A beat of silence.
Then Dominic said something unexpected.
“Neither are you.”
That was the first time the room stopped feeling like a threat.
But not the last.
Because somewhere in the hallway—
May you like
small footsteps were coming closer.
And Noah Kincaid, the boy who had not spoken in two years, was about to walk into a room full of answers no one was ready to hear.
