Chapter 4 - The Orphanage Ticket
The subway platform fell dead silent.
“Your little brother?” Margaret asked, looking at the trembling waitress.
Rachel picked up the laminated pass, her thumb brushing over the old St. Jude’s logo. “When my mother, Helen, disappeared twenty-two years ago, she left me with my aunt. But she had just given birth to a baby boy. She told my aunt he was going to a safe place. St. Jude’s.”
Vanessa shook her head, piecing the horrifying puzzle together. “Helen was Anthony’s housekeeper. Anthony vanished eleven years ago. If Helen had a child twenty-two years ago...”
Margaret’s stomach plummeted.
Helen Brooks hadn’t just been a housekeeper. She had been Anthony’s mistress before Vanessa’s mother. The baby boy sent to the orphanage was Anthony’s son.
“Anthony isn’t hiding Grace’s son at the orphanage,” Margaret realized, the terrifying scope of her husband’s plan finally coming into focus. “He’s using Grace’s son as bait to draw us to the one place he knows I would never bomb. The place where his eldest illegitimate son was raised.”
Daniel coughed a wet, rattling laugh from the concrete floor. “Anthony... he’s going to burn it all down. He wants a clean slate. No heirs. No witnesses.”
Margaret looked down at Daniel. She felt no pity. Only the cold, calculating clarity of the Mafia Queen.
“Leave him,” Margaret ordered. “Let his father’s men find him.”
“Mom, wait,” Grace said. She knelt beside Daniel, her face inches from the brother who had stolen a decade of her life. “Did you name him?”
Daniel looked at his sister, his eyes clouding over. “Leo. I named him Leo.”
Grace stood up, wiping her tears. She didn't look back as they left Daniel in the dark.
They breached the street level through a rusted service hatch, emerging into a rainy alleyway in South Philadelphia. Margaret shattered the window of a parked sedan with the butt of her gun, hot-wiring the engine with practiced, brutal efficiency.
“Get in,” Margaret ordered.
They tore through the rain-slicked streets toward St. Jude’s. The old stone building sat on a hill on the edge of the city, surrounded by wrought-iron fences.
Margaret cut the headlights as they approached, parking a block away.
The front doors of the orphanage were blown wide open.
“We’re too late,” Rachel sobbed, running toward the entrance.
“Keep your head down!” Vanessa hissed, pulling her back.
They crept through the shattered doors, stepping over broken glass. The main hall was eerily quiet. The nuns and children had clearly been evacuated, but the signs of a violent struggle remained.
Margaret moved with her gun drawn, clearing the hallway.
They reached the grand chapel at the back of the building. The heavy wooden doors were slightly ajar.
Grace pushed them open.
Sitting perfectly center in the aisle, illuminated by the moonlight filtering through the stained glass, was a tiny pair of blue canvas shoes.
Grace ran to them, dropping to her knees. She clutched the tiny shoes to her chest, weeping violently.
But Margaret wasn't looking at the shoes.
She was looking at the altar.
Pinned to the wooden cross with a heavy hunting knife was a folded note.
Margaret walked up the steps and pulled the knife free. She opened the paper.
If you want the boy, Margaret, come to the shipyard where our empire began. Come alone. Or the child burns with the ships.
Suddenly, Rachel screamed from the back of the chapel.
Margaret spun around.
Rachel was pointing at the shadows behind the baptismal font.
A woman was sitting on the floor, her hands bound behind her back, her face bruised and bloodied.
May you like
It was Helen Brooks.
Rachel’s mother. The woman who had vanished twenty-two years ago.
