Chapter 3 - THE VAULT OF GHOSTS
I stared at the dried blood in the grooves of Dominic’s key.
"Who killed your father?" I asked, my voice barely audible over Leo's soft whimpering behind me.
"The same man looking for your shoebox," Dominic replied flatly. "Félix Marchand. My father ran the ports in this city cleanly. Marchand wanted to use them for ghosts. Things that don't exist on paper. When my father refused, he was bled out on a warehouse floor."
Dominic picked up his key, then pointed to the recipe card in my box. It was a faded index card, written in my father’s elegant script: Poulet Rôti. 4 hours. 0 degrees. 4 minutes. 12 seconds.
"That isn't a cooking time," Dominic said. "It's a coordinate. 40412. It’s a lockbox number at the old Manhattan Fidelity Trust."
"That bank has been closed for twenty years," I said, pulling Leo closer to my side.
"The public bank is closed," Dominic corrected. "The private subterranean vault is still maintained for the people who can afford not to exist. We’re leaving. Now."
"I’m not taking my nephew anywhere with you," I snapped, standing up and putting myself between him and Leo. "You just admitted you were hired to kill my mother!"
Dominic didn’t argue. He just looked at me, a heavy, exhausted truth in his dark eyes.
Then, the ruthless mafia boss did something I didn't expect. He dropped to one knee, bringing himself down to Leo’s eye level.
"What's your bear's name?" Dominic asked gently.
Leo peeked out from behind my leg. "Barnaby."
"Barnaby looks tough," Dominic said, not forcing a smile, just speaking to the boy as an equal. "But the men who broke your door are coming back. I have a car downstairs. It has bulletproof glass and men who will protect you. Will you let me keep you and your aunt safe tonight?"
Leo looked up at me. I saw the absolute terror in his six-year-old eyes, masked by a desperate need for a protector. He nodded slowly.
Five minutes later, we were entirely gone from Astoria.
We drove into Manhattan, descending into a private underground parking garage beneath a towering, unmarked skyscraper in the financial district.
Dominic led us through a series of heavy steel doors. His men stayed behind to guard Leo in a secure, plush waiting room, ignoring my fierce protests.
"He is safer up here," Dominic insisted, his hand resting briefly on my lower back. "Where we are going is not for children."
We descended in a freight elevator that smelled of oil and old earth. When the doors opened, we stepped into a massive, echoing vault of tarnished steel and silence.
The walls were lined with thousands of small, square lockboxes.
Dominic walked down the aisles, counting the numbers etched into the metal.
40410... 40411... 40412.
The box required two keys to open.
I looked at Dominic. My hands were shaking again. I pulled my clean brass key from my pocket. He held up his blood-stained one.
We inserted them into the dual locks simultaneously.
Click.
The heavy metal drawer slid open.
Inside, there was no money. There were no diamonds.
There was a stack of black leather ledgers.
And resting on top of them was a garment.
I stopped breathing.
I reached out with trembling fingers and touched the fabric. It was soft, worn cotton. Faded blue.
It was my mother’s housecoat. The exact one she had been wearing the morning she gave me the locket in Brussels. It smelled faintly of lavender and the specific, metallic scent of rain.
"She didn't die," I whispered, my vision blurring with hot tears. "She didn't have a heart attack."
"No," a voice echoed through the cavernous vault.
I spun around.
Standing at the end of the aisle, holding a suppressed handgun, was Vivienne Chase. The woman in the red dress from the restaurant. But the dress was gone, replaced by a sleek black trench coat.
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And standing right beside her, holding an identical weapon, was Mr. Ferraro. My floor manager from Maison Noir.
"Your mother didn't die, Sophie," Vivienne said, her red lips curving into a vicious smile. "She faked her death. Because she wasn't running from the syndicate. She was the syndicate."
