Chapter 3 – A GHOST FROM THE PAST
The motorized hum of the loading dock door echoed like a death knell in the concrete room. Someone had overridden the system from the outside.
“Back into the tunnel,” Dominic commanded, his voice lethal. He shoved the photograph into his pocket, his grip on his gun tightening.
We dragged Mrs. Russo back into the shadows of the wine cellar just as the metal door fully retracted. Flashlight beams sliced through the darkness.
“Check the employee vehicles,” a gruff voice echoed. It was one of Paulie’s men.
I heard the sound of shattering glass. They had just smashed the window of my Corolla.
“We’re trapped,” I whispered.
“No, we’re not,” Mrs. Russo said. Her voice was suddenly stronger, the tremor of the ‘confused old woman’ entirely gone. She looked at me. “Emily. My blue coat. The one I gave you to donate last week.”
I blinked, confused. “It’s in my locker. In the staff breakroom. Just down this hall.”
“Get it,” she ordered. “Now.”
Dominic looked at his mother as if seeing her for the first time. “Mom, what are you talking about?”
“Just get it!” she hissed.
I slipped away, keeping low behind the massive oak wine casks, and scrambled into the staff breakroom. I ripped open my locker and pulled out the heavy wool coat. It felt unusually heavy on the right side.
I ran back and handed it to her. Mrs. Russo ripped the silk lining with her bare hands.
Out fell a heavy, rectangular black object.
A satellite phone. And a set of keys with a silver Mercedes emblem.
“Your father didn’t build this house without a back door,” she told Dominic, her eyes flashing with a fierce, matriarchal fire. “And I didn’t survive forty years in this life by forgetting how to use it. There’s a reinforced town car behind the boiler room wall.”
Dominic stared at her. “You’ve been faking the dementia.”
“I had to,” she said, her voice softening. “Celia started poisoning my tea six months ago. The stroke was real, but the confusion was a shield. It was the only way I could protect Leo.”
My mind spun. The fiancée he loved had been slowly killing his mother.
“Where is the boy, Mom?” Dominic asked, his voice cracking with an emotion I’d never heard from the ruthless boss.
“St. Jude’s Orphanage. Under the name Toby. But Celia found out yesterday. That’s why they came for me tonight. To torture the exact location out of me.”
She handed Dominic the keys. “We have to get to him before she does.”
We moved to the boiler room. Dominic found the false brick panel his father had built in the 80s. It slid open on rusted tracks, revealing a dusty but pristine bulletproof Mercedes sedan.
We piled in. Dominic turned the key. The engine roared to life with a quiet, lethal power.
He hit the garage door opener. The camouflaged exit opened into the dark alley behind the estate.
We shot out into the Chicago night just as an explosion rocked the front of the mansion.
We were free.
But as Dominic sped toward the city, the satellite phone in his mother’s lap rang.
Mrs. Russo answered it on speaker.
Celia’s voice filled the car, sickly sweet and dripping with triumph.
“Hello, Margaret. I’m so glad you got away. It saves me the trouble of bringing you here myself.”
“Where are you?” Dominic snarled.
“Oh, Dominic, darling,” Celia purred. “I’m at St. Jude’s. And you have a beautiful nephew.”
The line went dead.
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