Chapter 9 – THE GHOST RETURNED

The sunlight suddenly felt freezing.

I stared at the screen, the single letter M burning into my vision.

“Emily?” Luca asked, noticing my sudden stillness as he unlocked the SUV. “What is it?”

I held up the phone. Luca’s eyes hardened as he read the text.

“Marco,” Luca cursed softly.

In the chaos of the burning cabin and the warehouse showdown with Bellini, Marco—Luca’s treacherous head of security—had slipped away. I had completely forgotten about him.

“He knows about the vault,” I said, looking back at the brick facade of the VFW hall. “He was Bellini’s inside man. Bellini must have told him what the brass key opened.”

“Get in the car,” Luca ordered, his protective instincts instantly flaring back to life.

As we sped away from the hall, my mind raced. “Why didn’t Marco take the deeds himself? If he knew about box 404, why wait for us to open it?”

“Because the trust is heavily guarded by legal bloodline stipulations,” Luca explained, navigating the tight city streets with aggressive precision. “Only a direct descendant of Isabella Moretti could legally access and sign the transfer of those casino licenses. He needed you to claim them first. Now that they’re in your possession, they can be stolen. Or extorted.”

My grip tightened on the leather portfolio containing my mother’s legacy.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Luca pulled out his phone, dialing a number. “I’m going to find out. We’re going to the one place Marco doesn’t know about.”

Thirty minutes later, we pulled into the underground parking garage of a high-rise luxury condo in the financial district. It was completely off the grid—a safe house Luca maintained under a shell corporation.

We rode the private elevator in silence. When the doors opened to the penthouse, I stepped into a pristine, glass-walled apartment overlooking the entire city.

“Stay away from the windows,” Luca instructed, pulling the heavy smart-blinds closed with a touch of a button.

He moved to a sleek mahogany desk, opening a laptop and accessing a hidden server. He was hunting Marco’s digital footprint.

I sat on the edge of a white leather sofa, setting the portfolio down. My heart was pounding. I had just found my family, my identity, and a fortune I couldn’t comprehend. I wasn’t going to let a traitor take it away.

I opened the portfolio again, carefully looking through the documents. There were blueprints mixed in with the deeds. Schematics for a massive casino complex in Atlantic City.

As I flipped past a floor plan, something caught my eye.

A small, handwritten note stuck to the back of a blueprint page. The handwriting wasn’t legal script. It was messy, frantic. It was my father’s—Thomas Hayes.

If they come for the papers, give them the decoy. The real power is in the basement.

I frowned. “Luca.”

He didn’t look up from the screen. “I’ve got a ping on his burner phone. He’s at the docks.”

“Luca, look at this.” I brought the blueprint over to the desk.

Luca read the note. His brow furrowed. “The basement? The basement of what? The casino?”

“No,” I said, my pulse quickening. I recognized the architectural lines of the blueprint I was holding. It wasn’t a casino. It was the Moretti estate. The mansion we had just left Frank and Mia inside.

“This is a schematic of your house,” I said, pointing to the structural pillars. “My father modified the blueprints twenty years ago.”

Luca’s face went completely white.

“Marco isn’t at the docks,” Luca whispered, staring at his computer screen. The ping on the burner phone was stationary. “He spoofed the location. He left the phone there.”

My blood ran cold. “He’s at the house.”

Luca grabbed his gun.

We didn’t wait for the elevator. We ran for the stairs.