Chapter 3 - A Voice on the Line
Inside the house, the air was warm and smelled faintly of lemon wax and cedar. Mia stood on the polished oak floor, water dripping rapidly from her wet raincoat, making a dark puddle around her bare, muddy feet. She was shivering violently, but her arms held the baby with absolute, unyielding tightness.
"Mia?!"
The panicked scream came from the end of the hallway. Carla, the housekeeper, dropped a stack of folded laundry onto the rug as she rounded the corner. Her face went deathly pale when she saw the young girl standing there—covered in black river mud, dripping water, with scraped knees and blood trickling down her right cheek from a stray thorn.
"Oh my God! Mia! Where were you?!" Carla rushed forward, dropping to her knees. "I turned around for two minutes! I was on the phone—your father is going to kill me—what happened to you?!"
"Carla, stop yelling," Mia said, her voice small, raspy, but firm. She pulled back her raincoat just an inch, revealing the wet, pale forehead and dark tuft of hair of the infant sleeping against her neck. "He's cold. He needs help."
Carla froze. Her hands, which had been reaching to grab Mia, halted in mid-air. Her eyes widened in absolute shock as she looked down at the tiny face tucked against Mia’s chest.
"Is that... is that a baby?" Carla gasped, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "Mia... where did you get that? Whose baby is that?!"
"I found him in the river," Mia said matter-of-factly, though her lips were blue and her teeth were chattering. "He was in a bag. He was crying. We have to call Daddy."
"The river?!" Carla stood up, clutching her head in sheer panic. "A baby in the river?! Oh Lord, oh sweet Jesus..."
Without waiting for Carla to process the horror, Mia walked past the frozen housekeeper, her wet feet leaving muddy prints on the white runner rug. She walked directly into her father’s grand study, a room lined with mahogany bookshelves, leather armchairs, and a massive mahogany desk where three computer monitors glowed softly.
On the desk sat the sleek, silver landline phone—the direct line that bypassed his secretaries and rang straight to Richard Hartford’s private desk in downtown Manhattan.
Mia set the baby down gently on the soft leather sofa, wrapping her own dry cardigan around his shivering body as best as she could. Then, she climbed up onto the heavy leather chair behind the desk, picked up the receiver, and pressed the red button labeled SPEED DIAL 1.
In the high-rise glass tower of Hartford Industries, seventy miles away in the heart of New York City, Richard Hartford sat at the head of a mahogany boardroom table. Surrounding him were twelve executives, two chief financial officers, and three legal representatives. On the wall behind him, a massive screen displayed stock charts and acquisition projections worth billions of dollars.
Richard was thirty-four, sharp-featured, with silver-streaked dark hair, piercing grey eyes, and a reputation for being completely ruthless in business. He was a man who measured life in metrics, risks, and hard figures.
His personal phone, resting on the polished table beside his leather portfolio, suddenly vibrated and chimed a high-priority tone.
The board members went dead silent. Nobody called Richard’s private line during a quarterly review. Nobody.
Richard frowned, picking up the device. The caller ID read: HOME STUDY.
He motioned for his Vice President to stop presenting. "Excuse me for a moment," Richard said, his deep voice smooth and commanding. He pressed the phone to his ear. "Mia? Sweetheart, what's wrong? Is Carla there?"
"Daddy," the small, shaky voice came through the speaker.
Richard’s posture stiffened instantly. He knew his daughter’s voice better than his own. He heard the quiver in her tone, the slight gasp for air, and the distinct background sound of heavy rain pouring against the study glass.
"Mia, what happened? Are you okay?" Richard stood up from his chair, pulling his navy suit jacket closed. The entire board watched him with nervous curiosity.
"Daddy, I found a baby," Mia said over the line.
Richard blinked, forcing a short, faint chuckle, assuming it was another one of her imaginative rescues. "Mia, baby, did you find a kitten again? Or a bird? I told you, you can't bring wild animals into the—"
"No, Daddy," Mia interrupted, her voice dead serious, carrying an unnerving weight that made the hair on Richard's neck stand up. "A real baby. A tiny boy. He was in a bag by the river behind the house. He was floating in the dark. He’s cold, Daddy. Really cold."
Richard’s smile vanished instantly. His blood ran cold. "Mia... are you telling me you went out in the storm to the river?"
"Yes," she whispered. "Because he was crying. But I saved him. He's on your couch right now. Carla is crying."
In the background, Richard could hear Carla’s hysterical voice frantically talking to emergency services on another line. He realized with a jolt of pure adrenaline that his six-year-old was not playing a game.
"Mia, listen to me," Richard said, his voice dropping into a low, controlled register, though his heart was pounding like a sledgehammer against his ribs. "Don't touch anything. Don't go back outside. I am coming home right now. Do you hear me?"
"Okay, Daddy," Mia said softly. Then she added something that made Richard freeze mid-stride as he grabbed his briefcase. "Daddy? He has a shiny green necklace. It looks like a bird."
Across the boardroom, sitting in a quiet armchair near the window, was Catherine Hartford.
Catherine had been staring absently out at the rain-soaked skyline of Manhattan, detached from the financial meeting as she usually was. But when she heard Richard repeat the word—"Green necklace?"—her head snapped around.
She looked at her husband. Her face had drained of all color, turning as white as sheet glass. Her hands, adorned with simple diamond rings, began to tremble uncontrollably.
"Richard..." Catherine breathed, her voice barely a whisper, standing up so fast her leather chair scraped loudly against the floor. "What did she say?"
Richard looked at his wife, confused by the sudden terror in her eyes. "Catherine? What's wrong?"
"What kind of green stone, Richard?!" Catherine screamed, losing all her composure, stepping toward him with wide, wild eyes. "Ask her! Ask her if it's jade! Ask her if there's a phoenix!"
Richard looked between his frantic wife and the phone. "Mia... sweetheart, what does the stone look like?"
"It's green," Mia’s quiet voice sounded through the receiver. "And it has two bird heads. It feels warm."
May you like
Catherine dropped to her knees right there on the plush carpet of the executive boardroom, clutching her chest as a choked, desperate sob tore from her throat. Eight years of carefully constructed silence, eight years of buried grief, shattered in a single fraction of a second.
"It's him," Catherine wept, burying her face in her hands as the corporate executives gasped in shock. "Oh God, Richard... it's my family. They found him."
