Chapter 7 - Ghost from the PastThe armored SUV screeched to a halt outside my old apartment building, tires smoking against the cracked asphalt.
The neighborhood was dead, silent, and suffocatingly dark. Streetlights flickered brokenly overhead, casting long, skeletal shadows across the graffiti-tagged brick walls. This was the place where my husband had died, where I had spent seven months starving, crying, and praying for a miracle that never came.
And now, my baby was inside.
“Stay in the vehicle, Lena,” Dante commanded, his hand reaching for the matte-black assault rifle resting on the passenger floorboard.
“Are you out of your mind?!” I snapped, shoving the car door open before he could stop me. “That’s my daughter in there! I am not sitting in a car while monsters have her!”
Before Dante could grab my arm, I bolted out into the damp, chilling night air, my heels clicking frantically against the concrete.
Dante didn't waste time arguing. He cursed under his breath, slammed his door, and moved up beside me in a fraction of a second, his weapon raised, his body acting as a human shield against any sniper waiting in the dark windows above.
We reached the rusted iron gate of my old apartment complex. The heavy padlock had been blown clean off with a tactical charge; the door hung slightly ajar, creaking rhythmically in the midnight wind.
Dante raised his hand, signaling for absolute silence. He kicked the door open with a brutal thud, sweeping his rifle left and right as he cleared the threshold.
I rushed in behind him.
The hallway was pitch black, smelling of damp carpet, cheap instant noodles, and old dust. But as we reached the second-floor landing outside my old unit, a sliver of warm, golden light spilled out from beneath the cracked wooden door.
And floating out into the corridor was the unmistakable, terrifying sound of a baby’s laughter.
Not crying. Laughter.
My heart skipped a beat. I pushed past Dante, shoving the apartment door wide open.
“Ellie!” I screamed.
The living room was empty except for a single, overturned milk bottle rolling slowly across the linoleum floor. But sitting in the sagging armchair in the corner—the very same chair where my late husband used to rock Ellie to sleep—was a figure wrapped in a heavy, dark trench coat.
A silver-haired man stood beside him, holding a silenced pistol pointed directly at the armchair.
“Don't move, Dante,” a cold, raspy voice echoed from the shadows. “Or the brat gets a bullet through her skull before you can blink.”
My breath caught in my throat. I stared at the man in the chair as he slowly turned his head toward the light.
It wasn't a stranger. It was a man the city police had declared dead in a boating accident five years ago.
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My husband’s older brother—the man rumored to have built the Vanguard Syndicate from the ashes of the old mafia.
And resting peacefully against his chest, gurgling happily as she played with the silver buttons of his coat, was Ellie.
