Chapter 1 - The Vanishing Act
The elevator doors hissed shut,
and my heart stopped beating.
I looked at the security monitor,
watching the numbers descend.
47,
46,
45...
"Find him,"
I roared,
turning to my security team.
My voice echoed off the gold-leafed walls,
yet it sounded hollow,
even to me.
Leo was gone.
The son who never moved,
the boy who never reacted,
had followed a woman he didn't know.
He was carrying that white towel rabbit,
clutching it like a lifeline.
I ran for the service stairs,
my lungs burning,
my mind screaming.
Every worst-case scenario flashed through my brain,
each one more terrifying than the last.
I saw him being kidnapped,
I saw him falling,
I saw him lost in the bowels of the hotel.
I reached the laundry level,
the heat and the scent of bleach hitting me like a wall.
The machines hummed,
a rhythmic thumping that usually would have sent Leo into a panic.
But as I rounded the corner,
I froze.
There,
sitting on a pile of fresh linens,
was Savannah Reeves.
She was still in her uniform,
her back against a massive dryer.
And there,
sitting right beside her,
was Leo.
His shoulder was touching hers.
He wasn't flinching.
He wasn't covering his ears.
He was watching her hands.
She was folding another towel,
moving slowly,
deliberately.
"Another one?"
she asked him,
her voice like silk.
Leo didn't speak,
but he nodded.
A tiny,
almost invisible movement of his head.
I leaned against the doorframe,
tears stinging my eyes.
In a basement filled with steam and noise,
my son had found peace.
A peace I couldn't buy him with all my millions.
Savannah looked up and saw me.
She didn't look afraid.
She didn't look impressed by my presence.
She simply put a finger to her lips,
gesturing for me to stay back.
"He likes the vibration,"
she whispered.
"It grounds him."
I stayed there for an hour,
watching a maid earning peanuts,
doing what the world's greatest doctors could not.
My power was an illusion.
My money was paper.
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The only thing that was real was the towel rabbit,
and the woman who knew how to make it.
