Chapter 3 - A Mother’s Secret
Grace Williams woke up shivering, drenched in a cold sweat that soaked through her thin cotton nightgown. Her head pounded as if someone were driving iron spikes into her temples, and her throat felt like sandpaper.
For a terrifying second, panic clawed its way up her throat.
Zoe.
Where was Zoe?
She threw off the thin wool blanket, her bare feet hitting the cold linoleum floor of the cramped basement staff quarters. She stumbled toward the small cot in the corner.
Empty. The blankets were tossed aside, still holding the faint indentation of a three-year-old’s body.
“Zoe!” Grace choked out, her voice cracking into a raw, painful rasp. She staggered toward the door, her knees buckling under the weight of the raging flu. She flung the door open into the narrow corridor just as two massive security guards—men whose shoulders filled the brick hallway—stepped smoothly into her path.
“Easy, Mrs. Williams,” Marcus Vance said, his face carved from granite as he stepped out from behind them. He wasn't holding a weapon, but his hand hovered dangerously close to his holster. “The boss wants to see you.”
Grace clutched the doorframe, her knuckles turning white. Her breath hitched in her chest. The name Adrien Romano was a curse word whispered in the dark corners of Chicago—a phantom who executed traitors and buried problems where the lake was deepest. If he wanted her, it meant only one thing: she had been caught.
“Please,” Grace sobbed, dropping to her knees on the cold stone, her fever-shaken body trembling uncontrollably. “Please, take me. Do whatever you want to me, Mr. Vance. Just... leave my baby alone. She’s only three. She doesn't know anything. She wandered out because... because I was burning up, and she thought she had to finish my work so we wouldn't be thrown out into the snow—”
“Stand up, Grace,” a voice cut through the dim corridor like a razor blade.
Adrien Romano walked out of the shadows, his heavy coat removed, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his forearms. His expression was an unreadable mask of absolute, terrifying calm.
Behind him, holding onto the hem of his dark trousers with one tiny, black-stained hand, peeked Zoe. Her eyes were wide, and she looked up at her mother with a mixture of guilt and fierce, childlike pride.
“Mama,” Zoe whispered, letting go of Adrien’s pants and running to bury her face in Grace’s nightgown. “I shined his shoe, Mama. I did it good.”
Grace clutched her daughter to her chest, sobbing openly into her curls, expecting the end of the world to fall upon them at any second.
Instead, Adrien stepped forward, knelt down on one knee right beside them on the filthy basement floor, and extended his hand. In his palm rested a crumpled piece of purple-and-green crayon paper.
May you like
“Recognize this, Grace?” Adrien asked softly.
Grace looked down at the paper, and all the color drained from her face completely. She stopped breathing. Her eyes dilated with pure, unadulterated terror.
