Chapter 2 - SHADOWS IN THE EAST WINGMy first week at the Blackwood estate felt like walking through a minefield lined with velvet.
Rosie was a sweet, deeply lonely child. Her mother, Elena Blackwood, had allegedly died in a car accident three years prior, a subject completely taboo among the mansion's staff. Rosie spent her days trapped inside the fortress, surrounded by bodyguards who treated her like radioactive cargo.
To Rosie, I was a breath of fresh air. We spent hours in the sunroom, painting, telling stories, and filling sketchbooks with ridiculous animals.
To Jericho, I was a enigma he was obsessed with solving.
Every evening at midnight, I would hear his heavy footfalls pacing the hallway outside my quarters. He was watching me through the estate's CCTV, cross-referencing my fingerprints, trying to break through my erased identity. What he didn't know was that my digital trail was wiped by the government’s top cyber-architects.
Until the eighth night.
It was 2:00 AM. A thunderstorm roared over Miami, lightning flashing through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I couldn't sleep. My old combat injuries ached with the humidity.
I slipped out of my room, barefoot, carrying a small glass of water. As I passed the grand staircase, I noticed the heavy oak door leading to the forbidden East Wing stood slightly ajar. A faint, golden light leaked into the dark hallway.
Curiosity—a bad trait for a dead ghost—drove me forward.
I pushed the door open silently. The East Wing wasn't a living quarter; it was a command center.
Monitors lined the walls, displaying wiretaps, live satellite feeds, and street maps of Little Haiti and Downtown Miami. But what caught my eye was the massive corkboard in the center of the room.
Pinned to it were photos of high-ranking syndicate bosses, corrupt judges, and... a seal of the Ghost Syndicate.
My heart stopped. My glass slid from my fingers, shattering against the wooden floorboards with a deafening crash.
Before the glass finished settling, a cold steel barrel pressed hard against the back of my skull.
"I gave you two rules," Jericho’s voice rasped in my ear, hot and deadly. "You broke the first one."
I felt the hammer of a custom Sig Sauer p226 click back.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't put a bullet through your spine right now, 'Lennox'."
I kept my hands visible, raising them slowly. "Look at the map on your board, Jericho," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline pouring through my veins. "The third photo from the left. That’s Nikolai Volkov. If you’re tracking him through the harbor, you’re looking at the wrong docks. He stopped using PortMiami six months ago. He uses the private boatyards in Key Biscayne."
The gun barrel didn't move, but I felt Jericho tense behind me.
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"How do you know that name?" he growled.
"Because," I turned slowly, pressing my forehead lightly against the cold muzzle of his gun, looking him dead in his dark eyes, "you aren't the only one hunting the men who killed your wife."
