Part 2: The Secret Hidden Inside Rosie
Ellie lowered her eyes.
“I don't have one,” she whispered. “Mom says he went away before I was born.”
For a moment, Damon expected tears.
They never came.
Instead, she held out the rag doll again.
“Will you buy Rosie now?”
The billionaire stared at the doll.
The blue dress was threadbare. One arm had clearly been sewn back on by hand. It looked worthless.
Yet the child held it with the care of someone offering away her last treasure.
“How much?”
“Five dollars.”
Roman blinked.
Damon almost laughed.
Five dollars.
Not fifty.
Not five hundred.
Just enough money to buy bread, milk, and maybe medicine.
He reached into his coat and found a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
Ellie shook her head immediately.
“No, sir. Rosie costs five.”
For the first time that day, Damon smiled.
A real smile.
He handed her five dollars.
Then he handed her the hundred.
“The five is for Rosie,” he said. “The rest is a loan.”
“A loan?”
“You can pay me back someday.”
Ellie considered this carefully.
Then she nodded.
“Okay.”
Before she ran away, Damon turned to Roman.
“Find her.”
Roman raised an eyebrow.
“You want surveillance on a six-year-old?”
“I want to know if her mother is dying.”
Forty minutes later, Damon stood inside a crumbling room above an abandoned grocery store near Tenth Avenue.
The smell hit him first.
Cold.
Damp.
Hopelessness.
A woman lay unconscious beneath blankets on a narrow mattress.
Ellie's mother looked barely thirty.
She looked sixty.
An ambulance arrived within minutes.
Doctors later confirmed severe malnutrition, pneumonia, and untreated infection.
Another week and she would have died.
Damon paid the hospital bill without thinking about it.
That should have been the end.
It wasn't.
Because that evening, as he sat alone in his penthouse office, Rosie suddenly buzzed.
The sound was faint.
A tiny vibration.
Damon frowned.
The doll buzzed again.
He slowly turned it over.
"What the hell?"
Using a letter opener, he carefully loosened a section of stitching near the doll's stomach.
Something metallic slid into his hand.
A miniature recording device.
His blood froze.
Only one person in the world knew about devices like this.
His father.
The late Charles Blackwell.
The man who had built the Blackwell empire.
The man everyone called a visionary.
The man Damon had spent twenty years trying to live up to.
With trembling fingers, Damon pressed PLAY.
A crackle filled the room.
Then a voice spoke.
May you like
His father's voice.
And within ten seconds, Damon realized everything he believed about his family was a lie.
