Chapter 3 - THE GHOST OF SAINT JUDE’S
Eloise couldn't breathe. The air in the dive bar seemed to drop twenty degrees.
Ten years.
For ten years, she had carried the memory of that inferno locked in the darkest cellar of her mind. The smell of burning drywall. The deafening roar of collapsing roof timbers. The screams of trapped children. She had been seventeen years old, a junior night volunteer, when the flames trapped the third-floor pediatric wing. She remembered the heat peeling the skin from her neck as she carried three small children down the collapsing fire escape, shield-wrapping the smallest boy in her own jacket while burning rafters dropped around her.
She had never told a soul in Asheford. Her medical records had been sealed after the incident, her name forgotten in the tragedy's bureaucratic aftermath.
"How do you know about that?" Eloise whispered, her voice barely carrying over the silence.
Dante’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered beneath his stubble. For a second, the terrifying, untouchable mafia boss looked like a man who had been struck by lightning. His dark eyes softened into an abyss of haunting recognition.
He didn't answer her immediately. Instead, he turned his head slightly toward Douglas, who was practically wetting himself against the bar counter.
"Get out of this town by sunrise, Douglas," Dante said without shouting. "If I ever see your face on Main Street again, they’ll be dredging your remains out of Flathead Lake."
Douglas didn't ask questions. He stumbled backward, tripping over his own barstool, and bolted out the front door, leaving it swinging wildly on its hinges. The patrons at the pool table scrambled out behind him, terrified of being caught in the radius of the Moretti wrath.
The dive bar was empty now, save for the hum of the beer cooler, Dante’s two silent enforcers, and Eloise.
Dante reached into his overcoat and pulled out a worn silver lighter. He flicked it once, the yellow flame illuminating the dark fury in his eyes before he snapped it shut.
"My younger brother, Mateo," Dante murmured, his voice low and gravelly. "He was six years old. Diagnosed with acute leukemia. When the arsonists set that hospital ablaze to destroy evidence against a corrupt pharmaceutical firm, everyone ran. The nurses, the security guards, the cowards."
Dante took a half-step closer. His gaze fell once more upon the jagged burn along her neck and shoulder.
"The police report said a teenage girl refused to leave the pediatric ward. She carried Mateo down three flights of stairs while the ceiling collapsed on her. She protected his body with hers. She took the falling timber to her own flesh so a dying six-year-old wouldn't suffer third-degree burns."
Eloise’s eyes widened. Memory rushed back—the little boy with the pale face and big brown eyes who had clutched her sweater in the dark, crying for his mother.
"He survived," Eloise breathed, a tear finally threatening the corner of her eye. "The little boy... he made it?"
"He survived the fire," Dante said, a profound, aching sadness cutting through his lethal composure. "The leukemia took him two years later. But because of you, Eloise... he spent his last two years in my arms, at home, knowing he was loved, instead of burning alive in a dark hallway."
Dante extended his broad hand toward her, palm upward. An offering. Not an order.
May you like
"I spent eight years looking for the angel who saved my brother. And you’ve been walking these streets letting small, worthless men mock the sacred mark you earned saving my family." His eyes burned with an unyielding, protective vow. "Come with me. No one will ever laugh at you again."
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