Chapter 4 - The Ghost with Hazel Eyes
The East Suite was silent save for the crackle of a newly lit fire in the marble hearth.
Dr. Alan Ward, a silver-haired physician who had treated Moretti gunshot wounds and broken bones for two decades, was packing his leather medical bag on the mahogany coffee table.
On the oversized sofa, little Lily lay curled beneath a heavy cashmere throw, fast asleep, clutching a small glass of warm milk that had gone cold.
In the armchair opposite the hearth sat Grace.
Her hands were encased in thick, white bandages that reached up to her wrists, smelling faintly of silver sulfadiazine and lavender oil. She wore a soft, navy-blue silk robe that Maria, the head housekeeper, had fetched from the guest closets. Without her stained uniform and with her hair washed and draped over her shoulders, the illusion of an ordinary domestic servant vanished completely.
When Gabriel stepped through the door, Alan looked up and gave a subtle, grave nod.
“Both hands suffered second-degree thermal and chemical burns,” Alan whispered, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the child. “Lye dermatitis, severe dehydration, and her blood pressure is dangerously low. She’s malnourished, Gabriel. If she had continued working in that cold for another week, she would have lost two fingers to gangrene.”
Gabriel’s jaw hardened. “Give her pain medication that won't cloud her mind.”
“Already administered. She’s stable. But she’s terrified of you.” Alan slung his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll be in the guest quarters downstairs if you need me.”
Alan slipped out, clicking the heavy door shut behind him.
Gabriel approached the hearth. He looked down at Grace. She didn't look up, but her fingers twitched beneath the white gauze.
“The room is warm,” Gabriel said.
“Thank you, Mr. Moretti,” she whispered. Her voice was flat, empty of hope, the voice of a prisoner waiting for the executioner’s axe.
Gabriel pulled a chair close to hers and sat down. He pulled the black leather notebook from his coat pocket and tossed it onto the low table between them.
Grace’s hazel eyes darted to the black leather. She recognized it instantly. Every ounce of color vanished from her lips.
“Julian Vance pays very well,” Gabriel said conversationally. “Fifty thousand dollars a month to Margaret Collins. To keep the water freezing. To swap your vitamins for chalk. To make sure you were too sick, too broken, and too exhausted to ever lift your head and look around.”
Grace squeezed her eyes shut. A single, silent tear carved a path through the faint soot still smudging her cheek.
“He found me,” she breathed. “I knew it. Three months ago, the guards stopped rotating. Margaret started taking Lily’s temperature every morning. I knew he was watching.”
“Vance doesn't watch people he intends to kill,” Gabriel said. “If Julian Vance wanted you dead, you would have been dumped in the Chicago River sixteen months ago. He wanted you contained. He wanted you weak. Why?”
Grace didn't answer. She kept her eyes shut tight, her breathing shallow.
Gabriel leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “When you applied for this job, you used the name Grace Bennett. You presented forged papers from an agency that burned down two weeks after you were hired. Your social security number belonged to a woman who died in 1982.”
He reached out and tapped the cover of the black notebook.
“Julian Vance doesn't chase phantoms. Who are you?”
Grace opened her eyes. The terror in them was gone, replaced by a deep, bottomless exhaustion.
“If I tell you,” she said, her voice steady now, stripped of the maid’s deferential stammer, “you will kill me yourself.”
Gabriel’s brow furrowed. “I don't murder women who bandage their bleeding hands to buy their daughters bread.”
Grace let out a bitter, humorless laugh. She turned her head and looked straight into Gabriel’s amber eyes.
“Look at my face, Gabriel,” she said, dropping the ‘Mr. Moretti’ completely. “Look at my eyes. Look at Lily’s eyes.”
Gabriel stared at her. The hazel iris. The specific flecks of gold near the pupil. The slight cleft in the chin.
A memory, buried beneath five years of war, gun smoke, and vengeance, tore its way to the surface of his mind.
A warehouse in Gary, Indiana. December 2019. The explosion that tore through the Moretti family’s central logistics hub. That night, Gabriel had buried his older brother, Marco. Marco, who was supposed to take the crown. Marco, who had been married in secret six months before the fire to a woman nobody in the family had ever been allowed to meet.
*‘She’s not of our world, Gabe,’* Marco had told him over drinks, weeks before the inferno. *‘She’s a classical violinist. She’s pure. If our father finds out, he’ll use her as leverage. When the time is right, I’ll bring her home.’*
Gabriel had searched for Marco’s secret bride for two years after the funeral. But all records had vanished. The apartment in Lincoln Park was torched to the studs the very night Marco died. The woman had disappeared into thin air.
Gabriel stood up, his heart hammering against his ribs like a sledgehammer against steel.
“Elena,” he whispered.
Grace—Elena—looked away, staring into the flickering embers of the fire.
“Elena Sterling,” she said, her voice trembling. “Marco called me his songbird. And the night your family burned, Julian Vance broke into our apartment before the sirens even started. Marco had given me a key to a safe deposit box. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, I was never to trust the Moretti family. He told me… he told me *you* set the fire, Gabriel.”
Gabriel froze, the world narrowing to a pinpoint of white-hot shock.
“He told you *I* killed him?” Gabriel snarled.
“Marco believed it! He thought you wanted the throne!” Elena’s voice rose, a desperate hiss of agony. “Vance showed up an hour after the explosion, claiming he was there to save me from you! He locked me in an estate in Lake Geneva for two years! I didn't know Marco was dead until three months later!”
She looked toward the sofa where the little girl slept peacefully.
“I was already pregnant with Lily,” Elena whispered, tears finally breaking through her defense. “Julian Vance kept me alive because he wanted Marco’s vault. The offshore syndicate accounts that only Marco’s biometric key could open. When Lily was born, Vance ran a DNA test. Lily has Marco’s blood. The accounts are tied to Marco’s direct heir.”
She turned her bruised, beautiful face back toward Gabriel, defiance blazing through her despair.
“I escaped Vance fourteen months ago. I took my baby, dyed my hair, scraped off my fingerprints with acid, and walked through Chicago like a ghost. I took a job in your own house, Gabriel! Do you know why?”
Gabriel couldn't speak. His throat felt full of glass.
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“Because I thought the safest place to hide from a wolf,” Elena said, her voice breaking, “was inside the den of another wolf. I thought you would never look for Marco’s widow scrubbing your own kitchen floors. But Vance found me anyway. And Margaret Collins was his leash.”
***
