Chapter 3 - The Ghost In The Penthouse
My penthouse at the top of the tower on Fifth Avenue was built like a fortress of glass, steel, and silence.
Bulletproof windows three inches thick overlooked the sprawling canopy of Central Park.
Leo sat awkwardly on an Italian leather sofa that cost more than a working-class family earned in a year.
He looked impossibly small against the white minimalist furniture.
A maid had brought him a bowl of warm chicken soup and a glass of milk, but he had barely touched it.
Instead, the battered red toy truck sat squarely next to his bowl like an armed sentry.
I walked out of my study after spending an hour on encrypted lines securing the private clinic.
Three teams of heavily armed guards were now stationed outside Clara’s ICU room under fake diplomatic names.
Leo jumped when the study door clicked shut, his hazel eyes snapping to me like a frightened animal.
“Eat your soup, Leo,” I said, loosening my tie and sitting on the opposite leather armchair.
“It won't hurt you.”
“Is Mom awake yet?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“The doctors gave her strong medicine to fight the infection in her lungs,” I explained evenly.
“She needs to sleep until morning so her body can heal.”
Leo looked down at his small hands, dirty fingernails picking at the hem of an oversized sweater my housekeeper had given him.
“She told me you were dead,” Leo said suddenly.
I paused, my eyes narrowing.
“What else did she tell you about me?”
“She said my uncle was a prince who lived in a castle made of glass,” the boy murmured.
“She said he got lost in the dark when we were kids, and that bad men made him forget his family.”
Every word struck deeper than any blade an assassin had ever pushed into my ribs.
I had believed Clara was dead for twelve years because of a forged dental record and a pile of unidentified ashes.
Meanwhile, she had been running across state lines, hiding from shadows, believing that I had abandoned her to the wolves.
“I didn't forget, Leo,” I told him, leaning forward with my forearms resting on my knees.
“I looked for her everywhere.
When the fire happened, someone showed me papers saying she didn't make it out.”
Leo reached out, his tiny fingers caressing the chipped red paint of the truck.
“She kept this inside her coat every single day.
Even when we didn't have bread, she wouldn't sell it to the pawn shop men.
She said if we ever lost each other, I had to find a man with a gray suit and cold eyes and give him this truck.”
My jaw clenched until the muscles burned.
She hadn't sent him to find just any rich stranger; she had tracked my routine.
She knew I drove through that specific intersection every Thursday morning on my way to the docks.
She had collapsed, knowing her son would execute the only contingency plan she had left.
My private phone buzzed against the marble table.
It was Marcus, my head of security, calling from the basement holding cells near the Navy Yard.
I stood up, stepping toward the panoramic window to answer.
“Tell me what they said,” I ordered into the phone without greeting him.
“The shooters aren't cartel, Boss,” Marcus reported, his voice gravelly and tense over the secure frequency.
“They belong to a private military contracting outfit out of Delaware called Apex Defense.
Their payout was wired from an offshore shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands.”
“Who signed the transfer order?”
“That’s the crazy part, Ethan,” Marcus hesitated, a rare tremor in his voice.
“The beneficial owner listed on the banking registry is an old corporate entity that went bankrupt twenty years ago: Vance Maritime Logistics.”
A cold chill washed over my skin.
Vance Maritime was the front company our foster father used before federal marshals raided his shipping yards.
“Is he alive, Marcus?” I asked, my knuckles whitening against the phone.
“We pulled the records from the state penitentiary where he allegedly died of heart failure six years ago,” Marcus answered.
“The body was cremated within three hours of death without an autopsy.
The coroner who signed the certificate retired to a private villa in Costa Rica two months later.”
Everything was unraveling.
The empire I had built to protect myself was surrounded by ghosts I thought I had buried beneath tons of concrete.
I glanced back across the vast living room at the small boy sitting on the white couch.
May you like
If Marcus Vance was alive, he wasn't just chasing Clara out of ancient spite.
He was hunting the child.
