“Is it safe?” I asked, holding Noah’s hand tightly.

“It is the safest place in the city,” he said. “It runs on our proprietary Sterling-Home OS. The security grid is fully encrypted. Nobody can get in without my biometric bypass.”

He grabbed his coat from the rack and walked toward us.

“We are leaving now.”

We took the private executive elevator straight down to the basement garage.

The air in the concrete garage was cold and smelled of exhaust and damp stone.

A black SUV was waiting, its engine idling quietly in the dim light.

The driver opened the heavy doors, and we climbed into the leather interior.

During the drive, the boys remained quiet, looking out the tinted windows at the wet Manhattan streets.

Alexander held my hand. His grip was tight, his knuckles white.

“I am going to fix this, Emma,” he murmured.

We arrived at the residential tower twenty minutes later, entering through a private underground gate.

The elevator took us directly into the penthouse foyer.

The doors slid open to reveal a massive, minimalist space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the foggy Hudson River.