Chapter - 315
Thousands of miles away, the world was not blue and gold. It was white and grey.
The Swiss Alps were locked in a storm. Snow lashed against the reinforced glass windows of the Warner Chateau, a fortress of stone and timber perched on a knife-edge ridge that defied both gravity and zoning laws.
Inside, the temperature was controlled to a precise sixty-eight degrees, but the air felt freezing.
Silas Warner stood by the fireplace in his study. The flames roared, consuming logs of imported oak, but they cast no warmth on the old man's face. He was dressed in a heavy, black wool suit that looked like it belonged in a funeral parlor from the 19th century.
He was staring at a photograph on the mantle. It was Marnus, age ten, holding a cricket bat and smiling with that arrogant, gap-toothed grin that Silas had loved so much.
"He was soft," Silas whispered to the empty room. "He was loud. He was careless. But he was mine."
