Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Archives
By Thursday, the dynamic of the Morrison estate had shifted in a way that set Kevin completely on edge.
There was no screaming at breakfast. No frantic calls from the kitchen staff about broken china or overturned cereal bowls. When Kevin came down the stairs at 7:00 AM in a bespoke charcoal suit, he found Jordan and Justin sitting quietly at the kitchen island, eating oatmeal laced with sliced strawberries, while Annie hummed a soft, wordless tune by the stove.
The boys looked up as he entered. They didn't run to hide behind the pantry door. Justin simply raised his spoon in a silent, solemn greeting.
"Morning, Dad," Jordan muttered, his voice raspy from sleep.
Kevin stopped dead in his tracks. They hadn't called him Dad in over a year. Ever since the hospital, they had referred to him as Mr. Morrison or simply stared at him in wide-eyed silence, as if waiting for him to vanish into the corporate ether just like their mother had.
"Morning, boys," Kevin replied, his voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat, adjusting his cufflinks. He looked at Annie, who was wiping down the granite counter. "Did they sleep through the night?"
"From nine PM until six this morning," Annie said without turning around. "Though Jordan had a bad dream about a red truck around midnight. I gave him a glass of water and told him the walls of this house were too thick for trucks to get through."
Kevin felt a cold spike of adrenaline pierce his chest. A red truck. The exact description of the vehicle that crossed the median on the Saw Mill River Parkway. The police report had been classified, and Kevin had strictly forbidden any mention of the crash in front of the children.
"How do you know about the truck?" Kevin demanded, his voice dropping an octave, carrying the razor-sharp authority that usually made Fortune 500 executives sweat across a boardroom table.
Annie paused her wiping. She turned slowly, her dark eyes steady and unreadable. "Children don't need details to feel ghosts, Mr. Morrison. They absorb what we try to hide. When you lock a room, you aren't keeping the memory out. You're just trapping it inside with them."
Instead of answering, Kevin turned and walked out of the house, slamming the heavy oak front door behind him.
He climbed into the back of his waiting Mayhem sedan, his mind racing. Who was Annie Reed, really? Her employment file said she came from a quiet suburb in upstate New York, worked odd jobs, and had no criminal record. But people with ordinary backgrounds didn't look at billionaire heirs with that kind of unsettling, piercing empathy.
Once he arrived at Morrison Dynamics, Kevin bypassed his morning briefing with his chief operating officer, Marcus Vance, and walked straight into his private security office.
"Dig deeper into Annie Reed," Kevin ordered his head of corporate intelligence, a former CIA operative named Miller. "I want every tax return, medical record, phone log, and personal connection from the day she was born. Something is wrong."
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"You got it, boss," Miller said, his fingers already flying across his keyboard. "Should take a few hours."
Little did Kevin know, a few hours was more than enough time for secrets buried deep within the walls of his own home to finally crawl into the light.
