Three years ago, Alex Langford—darling of Wall Street, devoted husband, and perfect father—vanished without a trace. No note. No body. Just a half-empty closet, a crimson stain beneath the nursery rug, and the distinct, echoing sense that something was terribly wrong.

Now, the Langford estate sits like a glass coffin on the hill—pristine, polished, and rotting from the inside.

Ava Langford still lives there.

Wrapped in designer silk and sprayed with perfume that never fades, Ava drifts through the house like a dream that refuses to end. She laughs too sweetly. Cries when no one’s watching. And smothers her only remaining lifeline—her 17-year-old son Adrien—with love so intense it feels like a noose.

She kisses his forehead six times before bed. Waits outside his school in a Rolls-Royce every day. Tucks him in. Feeds him dinner like he’s still a child.

Adrien—tall, cold, adored—is unraveling.
The school calls him brilliant. His mother calls him “my baby.”
He doesn’t call her anything at all.

But the glass is cracking.

Someone walks the halls at night. Doors open when no one touches them. There’s a man in the security footage—one with Alex’s eyes, but not his smile. A forgotten journal turns up in Adrien’s room, scrawled with ink and obsession. And beneath the floorboards, something is ticking.

Everyone says Alex left. But Ava remembers that night.
She remembers the knock at the glass.
The way the lights went out.
The man in love with her who should never have been let in.

A year since I last saw sunlight. Since I last heard her laugh—Mom's laugh. Since I last smelled her perfume or heard her scream my name from the bottom of the stairs.


Every morning, his voice slinks through the cracks in the concrete, sweet and slow like venom in a vein.


"Still holding out hope?" he asks, dragging a chair across the floor like a butcher preparing his knives. "She's been everywhere, you know. Turned the city upside down. Bought police departments. Paid for satellites. She's destroyed people for you."


My wrists sting against the metal cuffs.


"She's burned reputations. Frozen bank accounts. She's hunted ghosts." He laughs. "She's a nightmare, Adrien. A walking grief-drenched obsession."


He leans closer, eyes gleaming with something sick and sacred. "And all for a boy who never even said thank you when she picked him up from school."


And I've learned the hard way that my silence sometimes keeps him safe.


But Nolan's footsteps shift direction, and I feel the panic start to rise in my throat. I don't even realize I've shouted until it echoes off the walls: "Don't touch him."


He doesn't know I'm awake when they bring me in. That's good.


My body's a roadmap of bruises and burns. My ribs grind when I breathe. I don't think I've stood on my own in three days. Maybe four.


But I lift my head anyway. I have to see him.


Nolan is laughing again. Talking about Ava. He always talks about Ava.


"She's a goddess, isn't she?" he hisses through clenched teeth, pulling my head back by the hair. "The way she used to touch you. The way she cries over him. It's not fair. You didn't deserve her. He doesn't either."


His spit lands on my cheek. I don't flinch. I don't give him that satisfaction.


"She used to hold him like he was made of glass," Nolan snarls. "She slept in his room. She cried over every scraped knee. Called him baby in front of the whole goddamn school like he was some miracle."


"You know what I was when we were kids, Alex? I was watching. Always watching. While you had her. While he had her. I was nothing."


He slams something metal against the wall.


Just a whisper. Just a broken, breathless whisper.


"Hey," I rasp. "Hey, it's okay. I'm right here."


And for one second—one terrible, beautiful second—we look at each other.


Two broken men, surviving for the same woman.


And somewhere out there, I know she's still burning the world for us.


Chapter 15 - The Forgotten Sons