Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Dining Room
Ryan stepped smoothly into the narrow gap between Natalie and the patriarch, his broad shoulders forming a defensive wall.
“Grandfather, you need to sit down,” Ryan said, his voice dropping into an authoritative, protective register.
“Step aside, Ryan,” the old man wheezed, his gray eyes snapping open with an intensity that burned.
“Not until you explain who Laura is,” Ryan replied, refusing to give an inch of ground.
Victor looked past Ryan’s shoulder, his gaze locking onto Natalie’s collarbone once again.
“Her name was never Laura,” Victor whispered, his fingers curling into tight, shaking fists.
“My daughter was baptized Lucia DeMarco in the cathedral across the river.”
Natalie felt a cold shockwave ripple through her veins, freezing the blood in her limbs.
“My mother was an ordinary woman,” Natalie protested, finding a sudden surge of defensive anger.
“She worked in a laundromat and a bakery in Ohio,” she continued, refusing to be pulled into their madness.
“She had nothing to do with this city, and she certainly had nothing to do with you.”
Victor’s lips curved into a bitter, mournful smile that held no humor whatsoever.
“Lucia ran from this city twenty-six years ago on a rainy Tuesday night in November.”
“She stripped herself of our name, our money, and every single photograph in this house.”
“She ran because she believed that erasing her past was the only way to stay alive.”
Natalie shook her head vigorously, taking another step backward until her heels touched the wall.
“You’re mistaken,” Natalie insisted, her voice tight with panic.
“People have similar birthmarks every day.”
“It’s just pigment on skin, nothing more.”
“There are millions of women who look vaguely alike across this country.”
Victor took another step forward, his eyes boring into her soul with unrelenting certainty.
“When did she die, girl?” he asked, the question hanging in the air like a hanging judge’s sentence.
Natalie stiffened, the old, familiar ache of childhood abandonment flaring inside her ribs.
“She didn’t die,” Natalie said coldly.
Victor stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening until the whites were stark against his graying skin.
Ryan turned his head back to look at her, a strange curiosity flashing across his dark features.
“If she didn’t die, where is she now?” Ryan asked, his tone quieter, almost careful.
“I have no idea,” Natalie admitted, hating how small and vulnerable her voice sounded in the vast room.
“She walked out of our apartment when I was six years old and never returned.”
Victor sank down into the nearest vacant dining chair as if the strength had been entirely cut from his knees.
Natalie had anticipated that the news of her mother’s desertion would break the old man’s delusion.
Instead, the revelation seemed to terrify him more than any threat of violence ever could.
“She left you behind,” Victor murmured, his voice hollow and thick with ancient dread.
“She didn't leave because she stopped loving you,” he whispered, staring blankly at the polished floor.
“She left because they found her trail.”
Ryan pulled out the chair directly across from his grandfather and sat down, leaning his forearms on the table.
“Who found her, Victor?” Ryan demanded, dropping the honorific entirely.
“What secrets have you been keeping locked in the vaults for the last twenty-six years?”
Victor ignored his grandson, his focus snapping back to Natalie’s pale, sweat-sheened face.
“When you were a child,” Victor began slowly, “did anyone ever call your mother Lucy?”
Natalie’s breath caught painfully in her throat, her chest seizing with sudden recognition.
A forgotten memory surfaced from the deep fog of her childhood in that tiny Ohio apartment.
An older woman with silver rings had arrived late one night, speaking in frantic, hushed tones.
The woman had grabbed her mother’s hands and whispered: Lucy, you have to pack the bags right now.
Her mother had slapped the woman’s hands away and screamed at her never to use that name again.
Natalie had buried that memory twenty years ago beneath layers of foster homes and survival instincts.
“I don’t remember,” Natalie lied, her hand trembling against her uniform skirt.
Victor read the flicker of panic in her eyes with the ease of a seasoned interrogator.
“You remember perfectly,” the old man countered, leaning forward in his chair.
Natalie felt another wave of dizziness roll through her head, accompanied by a sharp pang in her stomach.
She swayed on her feet, and once again, her hand moved unconsciously to rest over her womb.
Victor’s gaze dropped immediately to the subtle swell beneath her black apron.
“You’re carrying a child,” Victor stated, without an ounce of doubt in his tone.
Natalie’s stomach plummeted into an icy abyss of pure terror.
She was an unwed, penniless servant in the home of the most ruthless crime syndicate in the state.
In this world, an undocumented pregnancy was reason enough to throw someone onto the street without a cent.
Ryan looked up at her belly, then quickly averted his gaze toward the far wall to grant her some shred of dignity.
“I am sorry, Mr. DeMarco,” Natalie stammered, fighting back the humiliating burn of tears.
“I was planning to give my formal notice to Mrs. Gable at the end of this week.”
“I never intended to become a liability to your household staff.”
Victor’s face remained an impenetrable mask of stone, though his fingers tapped restlessly against the wood.
“How far along are you?” he asked, his voice entirely devoid of judgment, sounding almost clinical.
“Eleven weeks,” Natalie whispered, hugging her arms tightly around herself.
Ryan frowned deeply, turning to face his grandfather with rising irritation.
“What possible relevance does her personal life have to your old ghost stories?” Ryan demanded.
Victor looked up from the table, his eyes darker than the midnight sky outside the windows.
“It has everything to do with whether this family survives the coming year,” Victor answered.
The statement settled over the dining room like a cold winter fog, chilling every person present.
Natalie felt her knees shaking so violently she was afraid she would fall again.
Victor raised a single finger toward the head of security standing by the double oak doors.
“Summon Caldwell,” Victor commanded without looking at the guard.
“Tell him to bring the sealed mahogany case from the basement vault immediately.”
Ten minutes passed in absolute, suffocating silence while the family members remained frozen in their seats.
The heavy double doors creaked open, and Arthur Caldwell entered the dining room.
Caldwell had served as the DeMarco family’s principal attorney and record-keeper for nearly forty years.
He was a tall, stoic man with thinning gray hair and gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his hawk-like nose.
In his gloved hands, he carried an antique leather briefcase fitted with a heavy brass combination lock.
Caldwell set the case on the dining table, spun the tumblers with practiced ease, and lifted the lid.
He reached inside and withdrew a single, faded black-and-white photograph preserved in a plastic sleeve.
Victor took the photograph with trembling fingers and placed it squarely in the center of the table before Natalie.
“Look at her,” Victor commanded softly, his voice carrying an undeniable weight of authority.
Natalie stepped forward against her own will, drawn by an irresistible, terrifying gravity.
She looked down through the clear plastic at the young woman captured in the silver-toned print.
The woman in the picture was standing beside a much younger, dark-haired Victor on a stone terrace.
Her facial features were striking: high cheekbones, wide, expressive dark eyes, and a determined chin.
She did not look exactly like the tired, hollow-cheeked mother Natalie remembered from Ohio.
Yet the shape of her eyes and the curve of her slight smile were so identical to her own reflection that her chest seized.
Then Natalie’s gaze dropped to the woman’s exposed left shoulder in her summer dress.
There, resting just beneath the curve of her collarbone, was the exact same crescent-shaped birthmark.
The same unusual dimensions.
The same slight indent along its lower edge.
Natalie turned the photograph over with shaking fingers and read the faded blue ink written on the back:
Lucia DeMarco — three weeks before the crossing.
Natalie pushed the photograph away from herself as if the paper were soaked in poison.
“No,” she whispered, backing away until she bumped against a heavy service sideboard.
Nobody at the table spoke.
Nobody moved to argue with her or mock her denial.
That profound, heavy silence was infinitely more terrifying than any shouting match could have been.
Ryan stood up slowly, towering over the table as he stared at the photograph and then at Natalie.
“If Laura Brooks was Lucia DeMarco,” Ryan murmured, his voice grim with sudden comprehension.
Victor finished the terrifying thought for him without breaking eye contact with Natalie.
“Then this girl is not a maid.”
“She is my flesh and blood.”
“She is my granddaughter.”
Natalie shook her head violently, tears finally spilling over her lashes and running down her pale cheeks.
“No,” she cried out, her voice cracking with pure panic. “You are completely wrong.”
“I don’t belong to this family, and I don’t want anything from you.”
Victor’s cold eyes dropped down from her face, locking once more onto the hidden curve of her womb.
For the first time since she had walked into this house, Natalie saw genuine terror flashing in the patriarch’s eyes.
“You may deny the name all you want, child,” Victor said, his voice dropping into a lethal, hushed tone.
“That is why not a single soul outside this room can ever discover that you are carrying a child.”
Natalie wrapped her arms around her stomach defensively, terror clawing at her throat.
“Why?” she demanded, her voice shaking violently. “What does my pregnancy have to do with you?”
Victor looked toward the heavy oak doors, as if expecting assassins to burst through the wood at any second.
“Because whoever hunted my daughter twenty-six years ago will know exactly what that child represents.”
Ryan stepped beside her, his tall frame tensing as his hand drifted toward the inside of his tailored jacket.
“What does my baby represent?” Natalie pleaded, looking between the two dangerous men.
Victor did not offer an answer.
May you like
Ryan, however, looked at her with an expression of profound, tragic realization.
And in that single heartbeat, Natalie understood that her quiet life of survival had just been shattered forever.
