Chapter 6 - THE COAT
Union Station was a cavernous echo chamber of rushing commuters and glaring fluorescent lights.
Nico, Tom, and I spread out, scanning the crowds.
“Look for a girl who looks like you,” Nico instructed, adjusting the collar of his dark coat. “And look for Celeste.”
We ran past the ticketing counters and toward the main boarding platforms. Track 4 was boarding the 9:30 express to Chicago. The line of passengers was long and thick with winter coats and heavy luggage.
I pushed through the crowd, my eyes darting frantically.
Then, I saw it.
Near the back of the line, huddled against a concrete pillar, was a young woman wearing a faded green wool coat.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
That coat. It was emerald green with large black buttons. My mother had worn it every winter of my childhood until she said it got lost at the dry cleaners.
The girl wearing it had her head down, her dark hair falling forward, obscuring her face. But the way she held her shoulders—tight, defensive, terrified—was entirely my mother.
I took a step toward her. “Lily?”
The girl flinched and looked up.
It was like looking into a mirror that showed me ten years ago. She had my eyes. My nose. The same nervous habit of biting her bottom lip.
“Who are you?” she asked, clutching her small duffel bag tighter.
Before I could answer, a hand clamped down on Lily’s arm.
Celeste stepped out from behind the pillar. She had traded her evening gown for a trench coat, but her eyes were wild and desperate.
“Back away, Amelia,” Celeste hissed.
“Let her go,” I said, stepping closer.
Tom and Nico appeared beside me. Nico’s security men quietly flanked the pillar, cutting off Celeste’s escape route.
“It’s over, Celeste,” Nico said calmly. “We have the ledger. We have Leo’s watch. We know Richard murdered Leo to cover up the extortion, and we know you’ve been keeping Lily locked away to maintain leverage.”
Celeste laughed, a harsh, brittle sound. “You think you understand? Richard didn’t murder Leo. Richard died in federal prison three months ago. I’m the one who runs the family business now.”
She tightened her grip on Lily’s arm. Lily whimpered, terrified.
“Amelia’s mother found out about the faulty steel we were using at Southside,” Celeste snarled. “She threatened to go to the press. So, we took the baby. We told her if she ever breathed a word, she’d never see Lily again. I’ve paid this girl’s rent her entire life just to keep her quiet.”
I looked at Lily. She was shaking. She had lived her whole life in a shadow, funded by the monsters who stole her.
“And Leo?” Tom asked, his voice breaking.
“Leo was a busybody,” Celeste sneered. “He found the ledger. He found Lily. I couldn’t let him ruin everything.”
She reached into her trench coat. For a terrifying second, I thought she had a gun.
Instead, she pulled out a crumpled mass of white fabric.
May you like
It was the white wedding dress my mother had hand-hemmed for me. The one I had left in the staff room.
“You want your sister?” Celeste said, holding the dress over the dirty platform floor. “You want your perfect wedding? Walk away right now, or I swear to God, I will disappear her again, and you’ll spend the rest of your life looking.”
