Chapter One: The Iceman

The glass doors of CainTech closed with a hiss behind her. Silence swallowed the lobby no chatter, no phones ringing, no receptionist. Just polished marble, matte black walls, and a tension that wrapped around Sera Vaughn’s ribs like invisible wire.

He was here.

Her fingers tightened around the leather strap of her bag as she stepped into the elevator. Her heartbeat had no right to be this fast. Not just from nerves. From recognition.

The man she was about to meet wasn’t just a billionaire tech giant.

He was a ghost.

She’d seen his face once before.

On a missing person’s poster.

The elevator climbed with mechanical smoothness, no music, no sound. Sera stared at her reflection in the mirrored interior. Red lipstick, perfect. Hair pinned, no trace of the shaking hands or the storm in her gut. She was here under contract, assigned to counsel CainTech employees after a suicide scandal rocked the company.

But that wasn’t the real reason she took this job.

The doors slid open.

A tall woman in a sleek black suit greeted her with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Ms. Vaughn. Mr. Cain will see you now.”

Sera nodded. “Thank you.”

They walked in silence through a hallway lined with screens displaying code, data sets, and soft glowing shapes more like an art museum than a tech firm.

Then she saw him.

Adrian Cain.

Standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, bathed in stormlight. Tall, immaculately dressed in charcoal gray. Shoulders squared. Spine straight. Every line of him screamed command.

He turned as she entered and her breath caught.

Same jawline. Same piercing ice-gray eyes.

But it wasn’t just his features.

It was the absence of emotion behind them.

He looked at her like a man might look at a locked door calculating, indifferent, unmoved.

And yet something flickered in his gaze. Something like...

Recognition?

“Ms. Vaughn,” he said. His voice was low, level, stripped of warmth. “You’re early.”

“So are suicides,” she replied, without missing a beat.

His brow ticked upward. The faintest reaction. That was something.

She stepped closer. “Your VP threw himself off the forty-second floor. I’m not here to make you feel better about that. I’m here to ensure the rest of your staff doesn’t follow.”

“You think I need therapy?”

“I think the people who work for you are afraid to breathe wrong.”

His eyes held hers, unflinching.

Sera had been trained to read people. Micro-expressions. Behavioral cues. But Adrian Cain?

He was a vacuum.

“I agreed to this because our board insisted,” he said finally, turning his back to her again. “You’ll have full access to staff. Files. Surveillance footage.”

“Generous,” she said. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“Will I have access to you?”

He didn’t answer. Just stared out at the skyline as thunder growled in the distance.

She took a risk.

“I’ve seen your face before, Mr. Cain.”

He looked over his shoulder.

“In an old file. A boy who went missing when he was seventeen. His name was Daniel Ward.”

His body stilled.

“I have a photographic memory,” she said, stepping closer. “It’s not perfect, but it’s rarely wrong.”

He turned fully now. And for a heartbeat just one his face cracked.

Something passed through his eyes. Not fear. Not anger. Terror.

Then it was gone. Replaced by something colder than before.

“You’re mistaken,” he said. “I wasn’t born until I was eighteen.”

Sera froze. Her breath hitched just slightly, but she didn’t look away.

What kind of answer was that?

His voice hadn’t cracked. His tone hadn’t shifted. But those words they meant something. A warning. A confession. Or both.

“You know that doesn’t make sense,” she said evenly.

Adrian’s eyes narrowed. “You said you’re a trauma therapist, not an investigative journalist. Stick to your title.”

“You don’t believe in boxes,” she replied. “Your people describe you as a futurist. Visionary. God complex, even.”

The faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. A warning signal like glass under pressure.

“I believe in efficiency,” he said. “And right now, this conversation is inefficient.”

“I think you’re lying about who you are.”

Silence.

The air thickened like fog between them. The only sound was the rain beginning to hit the glass behind him. Gentle, rhythmic, sharp.

She waited.

He didn’t move. He just watched her. Like he was seeing all the way into her searching for something to destroy.

Then he spoke. Low. Controlled.

“If you dig into my past, Ms. Vaughn, you’ll find nothing. That’s not because I’m hiding skeletons. It’s because they’ve already been burned.”

She flinched.

He saw it.

And he stepped forward, one slow, deliberate pace.

“I’ve had over twenty background checks. Government-level clearances. Not a single piece of evidence that suggests I’m anyone but Adrian Cain. And yet… you say you’ve seen my face.”

“I have.”

“Then tell me,” he said, voice a breath away from dangerous, “why are you really here?”

She lifted her chin. “You already know.”

They were only inches apart now. She could feel the heat of him, even through his icy exterior. He didn’t touch her but the tension curled between them like something alive.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure if he wanted to threaten her… or kiss her.

Then his phone buzzed.

He didn’t look away as he pulled it from his pocket and answered.

“What?”

A pause.

“When?”

Another pause.

“Clean it up. Tell legal to delay the press.”

He hung up and turned his back on her again.

“A second employee attempted suicide this morning,” he said calmly. “Same method. This time… they lived.”

Sera’s stomach turned. “What the hell is happening here?”

“That’s what I pay you to find out.” He walked to his desk and tapped a key. “Security will escort you to your office. Access to everything except me.”

“I’m going to find out what you’re hiding,” she said quietly.

“You won’t like what you find,” he replied.

She turned to go.

Then paused.

“You can’t erase a past that isn’t yours to hide, Adrian.”

His fingers curled on the desk, just for a second.

And then

A sound from the hallway. A clatter. Running feet. A woman’s voice calling out: “Sir he’s not responding!”

Adrian was already moving. So was Sera.

They followed the panicked assistant into a security control room. On a monitor, a man in CainTech uniform slumped at his desk, blood pooling beneath his chair.

Another body.

Sera’s hand flew to her mouth.

But Adrian didn’t look shocked.

He looked… blank.

Not detached. Not cold.

Dead inside.

And for the first time since meeting him, Sera wasn’t afraid of what he might do.

She was afraid of what had already been done to him.

As Sera stared at the blood-soaked screen, her phone buzzed.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: “You’re too late, Mara. You’re next.”

Her childhood nickname.

Only one person in the world ever called her that.

And he was dead.

Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at her phone screen.

“You’re too late, Mara. You’re next.”

No name. No number. Just those words.

And that name Mara.

No one had called her that in fifteen years. No one except

Aaron.

Her brother.

Gone without a trace when she was thirteen.

Her hands trembled, the phone slick in her grip. She swallowed the sudden rise of panic, years of therapy trying to rise to the surface, coaching her to breathe, to center, to not spiral. But nothing about this moment was normal.

She hadn't told anyone in this building about her real past. Not her name. Not Aaron. Not the case.

This was intentional.

“You okay?” the security guard asked, catching the way her expression changed.

Sera slid the phone into her coat pocket, tightening her jaw.

“I’m fine,” she lied. “Who’s the man in that footage?”

“Leo Martin,” Adrian’s assistant said quietly. “Internal communications. Five years with the company.”

Sera didn’t speak. Her mind raced.

Another suicide attempt. This time on video. This time... someone made sure Adrian saw it. A message.

She turned and found him still watching the screen, arms crossed, face unreadable.

“You’ve had two employees try to die in a week,” she said. “That’s not a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Adrian replied, still calm. Still cold.

“Then you know this is a pattern.”

“I know this is a threat.”

His voice dropped low. A flicker in his expression tight around the mouth, the eyes. Not fear. Not sorrow.

Recognition.

“You’ve seen this before,” she said, watching him. “Haven’t you?”

He didn’t answer.

“I want to talk to the employees closest to both men. Any overlap in projects. Any personal connections. And I want access to their HR files.”

He looked at her then, fully. “You don’t give orders here.”

She stepped closer, her voice sharp. “Two of your employees are dead or close to it, and if you’re more interested in maintaining control than protecting your people, then you might be the real problem.”

That stopped him.

The guard beside them blinked like someone had just yelled "fire."

Adrian tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “Are you always this direct, Ms. Vaughn?”

“Only when I’m right.”

Silence stretched between them like piano wire.

Then he gave her a slight nod. Just once. A crack in the armor.

“I’ll have IT grant you access,” he said. “But if I find out you’re using this for anything else…”

“I’m not the one hiding something,” she snapped. “Not this time.”

She left the room without waiting for dismissal.

Down the hallway. Fast. Focused. Shaking.

She ducked into an empty breakroom and pulled her phone back out, hands trembling. The message was still there.

Still glowing.

“You’re too late, Mara. You’re next.”

She replied before she could think: Who is this? How do you know that name?

No response.

She called the number.

Blocked.

She ran a trace.

Nothing.

Just like Aaron’s phone the night he disappeared.

She stared at the screen.

No one should know that name. No one alive.

Unless...

Unless he remembered something too.

Meanwhile, back in his office…

Adrian stood motionless in front of his desk. The security footage frozen on screen. Blood beneath the chair. Shadows moving in the reflection of the glass behind the man.

He stared.

Zoomed.

Stared again.

In the corner of the screen almost imperceptible a symbol etched into the desk.

A circle. Three lines.

He knew that symbol.

But not from this world.

From his dreams.

The ones where he was trapped in a basement, screaming.

The ones where a girl called his name.

Daniel.

He sat down, slowly. Carefully.

And whispered the name to himself for the first time in fifteen years.

“...Daniel?”

In a secure server beneath CainTech HQ, an alert pings quietly.

KEYWORD TRIGGER DETECTED: “DANIEL”

SURVEILLANCE LOGGING INITIATED.

And in the shadows, someone begins watching.