That same evening, in a VIP box overlooking the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, Anastasia Sterling was giving off a different kind of energy. She'd come in second in qualifying, and that was a fantastic result, but her mind kept drifting. The noise of the engines, the smell of fuel and hot asphalt, usually grounded her. Tonight, it couldn't make her stop thinking of the pale face she saw in the park.
She scrolled through her phone absent-mindedly, a habit to quiet her thoughts. She pulled up a photo from the day of the commercial shoot, a behind-the-scenes selfie with the supercar. In the far, blurred background, was a running figure. She zoomed in. Nothing. Just a hint of pale colour.
"Anna." Her eldest brother's voice, filtered through the phone speaker, pulled her out of her thoughts. Alexander had video-called. He was in his home office, the Sterling Global headquarters visible in the night sky behind him.
"Hey, Xander. Can't sleep? Or is the Singapore deal with your icy friend Blackwood keeping you up?" she teased, forcing her usual antics.
"The deal is fine. Aaron is, as efficient as ever." Alexander's gaze sharpened. "You're distracted. Is it the car or the team?"
Anna sighed, the facade cracking. "No. It's nothing. Just a… feeling."
"What kind of feeling?"
"It's stupid. I saw someone. A kid, really. He was just running in the park during the shoot last week. And I looked at him, and for a second… I felt like I'd been punched in the chest." She shook her head. "It's this place. It's getting close to the anniversary . It makes me see ghosts."
Alexander's expression, usually so controlled, softened into something painfully vulnerable. "We all see them, Anna. Every day." He paused. "What did he look like?"
"Dark hair. Pale. Too thin. And his eyes… Xander, he looked so lost. It was just a split second." She rubbed her temples. "Forget it. It was nobody."
But Alexander didn't look like he would forget. A new, quiet intensity had entered his eyes. "A feeling is data, little sister. Incomplete, but not invalid. Where was this?"
"Just in Teron city park off Franklin Boulevard. Near the old filming location."
"I'll have someone discreetly review the public camera footage from that area for the day," Alexander said, his voice slipping into CEO mode. "We will find out if he's a local or perhaps a student. It's a long shot, but we don't disregard any lead. No matter how invalid."
Anna felt a surge of gratitude, mixed with the old, familiar ache. "Okay. Just… don't scare him off."
"I won't." He changed the subject, asking about her race, but the unspoken words hung between them. Could it be? After eighteen years, could it start with a feeling?
In his office, after the call ended, Alexander didn't immediately return to work. He pulled up a secure feed. Not city cameras, not yet. First, he accessed the private, high-resolution security footage from the building opposite the Blackwood Group headquarters from several weeks ago. He fast-forwarded to a time-stamped morning, watching as a black sedan pulled up and a lean, tense youth with dark hair and hazel eyes more matured for his age, got out. The footage was clear enough to capture the boy's face…pale, apprehensive, strikingly beautiful in a fragile way.
Aaron had mentioned an "anomaly," a boy from a mediocre family who'd tripped a security wire. Alexander had noted the name: Cameron Reed. He'd done a background check but didn't go too deep, the Reeds were beneath his notice and time. But now, he studied the frozen image on his screen. The dark hair. The pale complexion. The age was right and the eyes a suspicious element.
He cross-checked the location Anna mentioned. Franklin Boulevard was not far from the Reed family's postal district.
A coincidence. It had to be. The city was full of pale, dark-haired young men. Yet, his sister's "feeling" was a rare occurrence in their family. And this particular boy had already, inexplicably, brushed against the periphery of Aaron Blackwood's world, a world that connects with Alexander's own.
He closed the footage. He wouldn't tell Anna. Not until he had more than a suspicion. But a new file opened in his mind, labelled with the name Cameron Reed. The search parameters had just been changed by a sister's intuition and a brother's desperate need to believe.
Two thousand miles apart, Cameron tried to sleep in his quiet dorm, and Anna stared at the night sky in Monaco, both unknowingly drawn by the same faint, gravitational pull of blood.