She controlled the Manhattan skyline with her skyscrapers. She controlled her board of directors with a quiet, lethal grace. And she meticulously controlled her private life. There was only one person in the world who could bypass the steel walls of Victoria’s heart.
Her 7-year-old son, Harrison. Harrison was the beautiful, chaotic center of her meticulously ordered universe. He was an incredibly unique-looking child possessing a striking physical anomaly, heterochromia iridum. His left eye was a piercing, icy blue while his right was a deep, earthy hazel.
He also had a sharp widow’s peak and a tiny, pale birthmark shaped like a crescent moon resting perfectly on his left collarbone. Victoria had always attributed these striking features to the anonymous, premium genetic donor her late husband, David Croft, had supposedly sourced when they turned to surrogacy.
Years ago, a brutal battle with cervical cancer had left Victoria unable to carry a child. Her eggs had been harvested prior to the hysterectomy and David, a charismatic but fiercely private venture capitalist, had insisted on taking the reins of the surrogacy process to spare Victoria the emotional toll.
He handled the clinic, the paperwork, and the secretive private appointments. When David brought a newborn Harrison home to their penthouse 7 years ago, Victoria’s life finally felt complete. Three years later, David died instantly in a private helicopter crash in the Swiss Alps leaving Victoria as a single mother.
Since then, it was just her and Harrison against the world. It was a crisp, brilliant Tuesday afternoon in October when the illusion cracked. Victoria had cleared her afternoon schedule, a rare occurrence, to take Harrison to the Conservatory Water in Central Park.
The air smelled of roasted peanuts and drying leaves. Her two plainclothes security guards, Miller and Barnes, lingered 50 ft back blending invisibly into the crowd of tourists and nannies. Harrison was kneeling at the edge of the pond intensely focused on steering his remote-controlled mahogany sailboat.
Suddenly, a rogue gust of wind sent the toy veering off course wedging it firmly into a thick cluster of reeds near the stone embankment. « Mom, it’s stuck. » Harrison called out, his shoulders slumping.
