Chapter 2 - The Echo of a Ghost
The word hung in the vast ballroom, a fragile, impossible sound. Mommy.
The silence that followed was heavier than any bullet I had ever fired. My guards tensed, hands instinctively drifting toward their holsters as the crowd collectively stopped breathing. I stared at my son, whose small hands gripped the dark fabric of Emma Carter’s maid uniform.
“How?” The word tore from my throat, raw and demanding. I crossed the distance between us in three long strides, towering over the girl. My consigliere, Marcus, stepped up right behind me, his eyes darting across the room. “How do you know that song?”
Emma didn’t flinch. She kept her eyes on Oliver, gently brushing a lock of dark hair from his forehead before she looked up at me. “I didn’t just clean the upstairs rooms, Mr. Hale,” she said, her voice steady despite the terrifying weight of my presence. “Before I worked here, I was a night custodian at St. Jude’s Hospice. I cleaned Mrs. Hale’s room. On her worst nights, when the pain medication didn't work, she asked me to hum to her. She taught me the melody. She told me it was the only thing that kept the monsters away for her little boy.”
My chest seized. Serena. Even in her final, agonizing days, she had been laying a path for Oliver.
“You spoke to my wife,” I murmured, the absolute authority of the Chicago syndicate momentarily forgotten.
“She made me promise,” Emma said, standing up to meet my gaze. “She said if I ever found my way to your estate, I was to look out for him. Because she knew you would be too busy fighting the world to see the quiet battles in your own house.”
Gasps echoed from the socialites nearby. No one spoke to Preston Hale that way. Marcus stepped forward, his face flushed with anger. “Boss, she’s a maid. This is a parlor trick. Let me have the boys escort her out—”
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“Touch her, Marcus, and you lose the hand,” I said softly. I didn’t look away from Emma. I had made a promise in front of four hundred of Chicago’s most dangerous and powerful people. I was a man of my word; it was the only currency the underworld truly respected. “You brought my son back to me, Emma Carter. And I made a vow tonight.”
I extended my hand to her. “Pack your things. You aren't cleaning rooms anymore.”
