Chapter 1 - The Anatomy of a Ghost“How long have you known about this?” Declan’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble in the damp, enclosed air of the hidden corridor.
Nora didn’t slow her pace. She moved with a practiced, silent grace that completely contradicted her clumsy maid persona.
“Three years,” she answered over her shoulder.
Declan froze, his hand instinctively dropping to the custom-molded Glock tucked into the small of his back. “Three years? The house was empty for five years before I bought it. I’ve owned it for ten. No one has lived here except my staff.”
“I didn’t say I lived here,” Nora retorted, ducking beneath a low-hanging timber and emerging into a narrow vertical shaft illuminated by a thin sliver of yellow light. “I said I’ve known about the passages for three years. I map architecture, Mr. Gallagher. Especially houses belonging to men who think they are untouchable.”
Declan stepped into the shaft, the chill of the concrete walls seeping through his expensive custom wool. Every instinct told him to pull his weapon, put a bullet in the back of this mysterious woman’s head, and walk out. But the lingering image of Liam Foley’s smile across the ballroom—a smile too smooth, too practiced—held his trigger finger back.
Liam was his shadow. Liam had taken a bullet for him in the alleyways behind the old meatpacking district back in ’12. Liam knew every bank account, every corrupt judge, every dirty secret.
And according to the ghost of a maid standing three feet above him, Liam was about to blow him to pieces and hand his empire over to the Bellinis on a silver platter.
“If you’re an assassin,” Declan whispered, his eyes narrowing in the dim light, “you’re taking the scenic route.”
“If I were an assassin,” Nora hissed, stopping abruptly and turning to face him so sharply he almost collided with her, “you’d already be a stain on your custom study rug. I am not here to kill you, Declan. I’m here to watch you burn the man who is trying to destroy you.”
She reached out and pressed a subtle indentation in the wainscoting. A heavy wooden panel slid inward with a faint hiss, revealing a dark, velvet-lined observation slit.
“Look,” she commanded.
Declan leaned forward, placing his eye against the cold brass mesh of the spy hole.
May you like
The view opened directly into his third-floor private study.
The room was grand, dominated by a massive mahogany desk, leather-bound first editions, and a roaring fireplace. And standing right beside the desk, casually pouring a glass of 30-year-old scotch, was Liam Foley.
