Chapter 6 - The Ghost in the Shadows
Four months later. October in Chicago.
The autumn leaves drifted golden and red across the footpaths of Lincoln Park.
Life had transformed completely. With Adrian’s encouragement and financial backing, I had officially reopened my father’s old historical preservation consultancy firm, Ashford & Associates, working out of a sunlit loft office in River North.
Josie and Willa were enrolled in a top-tier private elementary school near Gold Coast, thriving academically and socially, their days filled with ballet classes, art lessons, and laughter.
And Adrian... Adrian had become the center of my world.
Yet, despite our happiness, a strange, uneasy quiet had settled over the city over the past three weeks.
It began with small things. A black sedan idling across the street from the girls' school for ten minutes before driving off when Moretti security approached. A series of anonymous phone calls to my office that disconnected the moment I answered.
At seven o'clock on a rainy Thursday evening, I was in my office finishing a grant proposal for the Chicago Architectural Foundation.
The main lights of the office were dimmed, leaving only my desk lamp casting a warm circle of light over my papers.
The front glass door chimed softly.
"We're closed," I called out, assuming it was the cleaning crew.
"You always did stay late when you were hiding from the truth, Camille," a raspy, familiar voice replied from the shadows of the hallway.
My blood ran cold instantly. My pen dropped from my fingers.
A woman stepped into the circle of light.
She was in her late fifties, wearing a sharp black trench coat, her dark hair pulled into a tight knot, her face sharp and bitter.
Victoria Ashford. Travis’s mother.
"Victoria," I whispered, my hand slowly sliding toward the panic button mounted under my desk frame.
"Don't touch it," Victoria said calmly, pulling a sleek black snub-nosed revolver from her coat pocket and aiming it directly at my chest. "If you touch that button, Camille, I will put a bullet through your heart before your billionaire lover’s guards make it up the elevator."
I froze, my breath locking in my lungs, my pulse hammering wildly in my ears.
"What do you want, Victoria?" I asked, forcing my voice to remain steady. "Travis is in prison because he committed felonies. Your brother-in-law is in federal custody because he was corrupt. I didn't ruin your family."
"You destroyed us!" Victoria hissed, her eyes wild with a cold, unhinged venom. "My family held power in this city for thirty years! My son was going to be a state senator! And you... a nobody waitress... you brought Adrian Moretti into our lives and stripped us of everything! Our home is in foreclosure! Our accounts are frozen!"
She stepped closer to the desk, the gun steady in her trembling hand.
"I tried to deal with you quietly," Victoria sneered. "I offered five hundred thousand dollars to two men at Cook County jail last week to end your son's trial before the appeal. But Moretti’s men intercepted them. Moretti has blocked every door, every alley, every escape route."
May you like
She raised the revolver, leveling it right between my eyes.
"So if my family is going to burn, Camille," Victoria whispered, "I am going to make sure Adrian Moretti spends the rest of his life staring at your grave."
