Chapter 4 - THE MIDNIGHT CALLThat should have ended the night's terrifying surprises.
Instead, at exactly 11:47 p.m., after the last customer had trickled out and Mikhail’s men were sweeping the perimeter, the old, rotary diner phone hanging on the kitchen wall rang out with a harsh, piercing shriek.
I picked it up with shaking hands.
A distorted female voice hissed through the receiver: "Do not let Mikhail take his son home tonight."
Before I could speak, she dropped my full legal name, warned me that Mikhail’s mansion was deeply compromised by traitors, and commanded me to look inside Misha’s abandoned paper bag.
Then, the line clicked dead.
My heart hammering against my ribs, I walked back out to the booth where Misha had left his things. Reaching into the damp paper bag, I tore open the folded cardboard bottom.
Hidden away in a secret compartment was a thick, waxed envelope addressed in crisp ink: To Grace.
I pulled out the contents. Inside lay an old, yellowed polaroid photograph showing my late mother standing proudly in front of Ruby’s Place—side-by-side with a younger Mikhail Volkov, his elegant wife Irina, and a baby Misha wrapped in a blanket.
Mikhail crossed the room, caught sight of the photograph over my shoulder, and turned sheet-white. I had never known my mother. I certainly had never known she shared a past with the most dangerous criminal family in the Midwest.
Flipped over, a handwritten note from Irina explained that my mother had once saved her life when she had nowhere else to turn. It warned Mikhail never to trust the estate's phone lines, never to bring his son back to the main house tonight, and to watch his back against his own cousin, Alexei.
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Then, my eyes drifted to the very bottom of the photograph. Scrawled across the cardboard backing in my dead mother’s familiar handwriting were six chilling words:
“Grace, when the boy comes, remember the basement.”
