Chapter 9 - The Lion at the Harbor Club
The rain over Lakeview Ridge had turned into a torrential downpour, whipping the surface of the river into a churning mass of black waves.
The black Mercedes SUV cut through the storm like a guided missile, its high-beam headlights slicing through the sheets of water flooding the coastal boulevard.
Lucas sat behind the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles in his temples throbbed in rhythm with the windshield wipers.
Beside him in the passenger seat sat Emma.
She had stripped off her maid’s apron back at the estate.
In its place, Eleanor had insisted she wear an elegant, tailored black wool trench coat and a delicate gold cross necklace that Anthony DeLuca had purchased for his goddaughter twenty-seven years ago.
In the back seat sat Arthur Blake, clutching his battered briefcase containing the forged warrant, the sealed Briarwood asylum escape reports, and the 1999 roster.
"Lucas, you cannot walk into the Highpoint Harbor Club with drawn weapons," Arthur warned, his voice shaking with nervous apprehension.
"The city’s elite are inside that ballroom tonight."
"The mayor is there."
"Three supreme court justices are there."
"The entire police commission is celebrating Vale’s thirty years of municipal service."
"If you cause a bloodbath in that building, the DeLuca empire will face federal indictments by breakfast."
"I don't give a damn about the DeLuca empire, Arthur," Lucas replied coldly, never taking his eyes off the rain-slicked road.
"I care about two girls whose lives were stolen by a monster wearing a gold badge."
"If Maya Lin pulls a gun on Vale in that ballroom, his private security contractors will cut her down in five seconds."
"They will claim she was a deranged former mental patient attempting an assassination."
"The media will applaud Vale for surviving."
"And the truth of what happened in that yellow cottage will die with her on the marble floor."
"We are going in there to stop her from throwing her life away," Emma said firmly, her hand resting on the dashboard as the car swerved around a flooded turn.
"She spent nine years in that asylum fighting to keep my name alive."
"I will not let Richard Vale kill her twice."
Ten minutes later, the massive limestone facade of the Highpoint Harbor Club loomed out of the darkness.
Valet attendants in yellow rain slickers scrambled under the covered portico as high-end luxury sedans and limousines dropped off the city’s political aristocracy.
Lucas did not pull into the valet line.
He rammed the heavy SUV over the concrete curb, parking directly across the grand entrance stairs, blocking three limousines in their tracks.
Before the security guards at the door could protest, Lucas kicked his door open and stepped into the pouring rain.
He flashed his platinum club membership card in the face of the head doorman, who turned pale at the sight of the DeLuca boss.
"Mr DeLuca, the banquet is private—" the doorman stammered.
"Step aside, Thomas," Lucas said in a voice that brooked no argument.
"Or spend the rest of the night swimming in the harbor."
The doorman swallowed hard and pulled the heavy brass doors open.
Lucas, Emma, and Arthur swept into the gilded grand lobby of the club.
The sound of a live string quartet and the clinking of champagne flutes drifted from the grand ballroom on the second floor.
Emma looked around the opulent lobby with its crystal chandeliers and oil portraits of former governors.
Suddenly, her gaze locked onto a figure standing near the entrance to the service hallway beneath the grand staircase.
A woman in a tailored dark navy suit.
She had sharp, striking features, dark chestnut curls pulled back into an austere chignon, and piercing green eyes that swept the room with predatory focus.
Her right hand was buried deep inside the pocket of her trench coat, gripping the unmistakable outline of a heavy firearm.
It was the older girl from the porch swing photograph.
The real Emma Hayes.
"Emma!" the younger woman cried out across the marble lobby, breaking protocol and ignoring the startled glances of wealthy patrons.
The woman in the navy suit froze.
Her green eyes snapped toward the sound of her childhood name.
For twenty-seven years, nobody had called her by that name without following it with a medical diagnosis or a sedative injection.
She saw Emma approaching, accompanied by the towering figure of Lucas DeLuca.
"Stay back from me," Maya Lin hissed, pulling a suppressed black automatic pistol partially out of her coat pocket.
"If you take another step, DeLuca, I will put a bullet through your throat right here in front of your country club friends."
"Maya, listen to me," Emma said softly, stopping three paces away with her hands raised in the open air.
"You are not Maya Lin."
"Your name is Emma Hayes."
"You are the daughter of Sarah Hayes."
"And twenty-seven years ago, you sat on a wooden porch swing outside a yellow cottage by the Old Mill Canal and shared an apple with your four-year-old cousin."
Maya’s green eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing shock.
Her hand holding the gun began to tremble violently.
"How do you know that?" Maya whispered, her voice cracking with the agonizing weight of buried memories.
"The doctors at Briarwood told me I invented that swing."
"They told me the yellow house was a hallucination."
Emma reached into the collar of her coat and pulled out the small color photograph from 1999 that Anthony DeLuca had preserved in the red wax envelope.
She held it out with a steady hand.
Maya looked down at the glossy print.
She saw the little girl with the green eyes holding the apple.
And beside her, the four-year-old girl holding the ragged white rabbit.
"Look at my face, Emma," the younger girl pleaded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Look at me."
"I am Emily."
"I am the little girl who hid in the cedar wardrobe behind the winter coats."
"I am the cousin you tried to protect."
Maya stared from the photograph to Emma’s tear-stained face.
The defensive wall of rage, paranoia, and trauma that had kept her alive through nine years of asylum torture and eighteen years of hiding suddenly shattered into dust.
"Emily?" Maya gasped, her voice breaking into a ragged, childlike sob.
"You're... you're alive?"
"They told me they buried you in an unmarked grave the night they took us."
"I am alive," Emily cried, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around the older sister who had suffered in the dark for her sake.
The two stolen girls clutched each other in the center of the grand lobby, weeping against each other's shoulders while the wealthy patrons stared in stunned silence.
Lucas stood over them like an iron sentinel, his coat open, his hand resting near his shoulder holster, daring any security guard in the room to make a move.
Suddenly, the double mahogany doors of the grand ballroom swung open at the top of the marble staircase.
A distinguished man in a bespoke tuxedo stepped out onto the landing, surrounded by city commissioners and high-ranking police brass.
He was seventy-two years old, with immaculate silver hair, cold steel-blue eyes, and the arrogant, triumphant smirk of a man who believed he had outlived all his sins.
Captain Richard Vale looked down from the landing, his champagne glass resting comfortably in his hand.
His cold gaze fell upon the two girls embracing on the marble floor below.
Then his eyes shifted to Lucas DeLuca, and finally to Arthur Blake, who was holding the forged warrant in his trembling hands.
The arrogant smile vanished from Richard Vale’s face, replaced by a gray, suffocating mask of absolute horror.
May you like
The ghosts he had buried twenty-seven years ago had returned from the dead.
And they were standing side by side in the center of his victory celebration.
