You may have forgotten, but I have not. You are most certainly next!

Ice fills my veins as I hand the note to Gabe.

“We need help, Damien. Let me call the police,” Gabe implores after he’s read the note.

“No!” I stand firm. “No police. I won’t open a Pandora’s box by calling them. God only knows what all they’ll uncover from my father and brother’s records if we tell them they were probably murdered and my accident too was premeditated.”

“Then let us involve Mike,” Gabe suggests, tilting his head to the door.

Mike is, as usual, waiting right outside my office. A sentinel ready to strike if need be.

“How’s that going to help?” I cross my arms in front of me.

“I don’t know!” Gabe gives a half shrug. “He’s ex-MI6. I’m pretty sure he has enough contacts to help us discreetly.”

“Alright!”

I call Mike inside. He looks from me to Gabe and back at me, waiting for one of us to speak.

I hand him the note. “This arrived along with the flowers.”

He goes through it and addresses me. “Is this the first threatening note you have received?”

“It is the first since my accident.”

“Pink carnations and white lilies signify death and mourning,” he explains. “Is there anything else you need to tell me, sir?”

“Make him hear the voice message,” I tell Gabe.

The message plays and we all listen to my voice as it comes through the phone speaker.

“We need your help, Mike,” I say as soon as the message finishes. “I don’t want to involve the police at this point because, as you know, I have no recollection of anything.”

Mike asks me questions regarding my father and brother and my relation to them, which I answer truthfully. There’s not much to say because we had no equation whatsoever. They hated me for never toeing their line and the sentiment was mutual. They despised my success with Gabe and our firm and their hatred only fueled my desire to succeed even more. And while they were making money by destroying the family legacy, I was building my own wealth and privilege without them.

“Sir,” Mike calls out to me. “All this does look suspicious, your father and brother’s death, your accident and now this,” he says. “We need to figure out who would want all the men of the Kittridge family dead and why. Have you had a chance to go over your father’s or brother’s documents to check if they had received any similar notes?”

“No, I haven’t had the time to search my father and brother’s effects.”

“Then we will have to go through their things soon, sir”

I nod.