Chapter 3 - THE GHOST FROM PHILADELPHIAI did not sleep.
At three in the morning, I found Lucian in his study standing before a wall of photographs.
Mine.
Ethan’s.
The Sterling Hotel.
Judge Richard Cole.
And a man I did not recognize.
He had gray hair, a narrow face and dead-looking blue eyes.
“Who is he?”
Lucian turned.
“You should be asleep.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He hesitated.
“Victor Sloane.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Who is he?”
“A former attorney.”
“For Ethan?”
“For his father.”
I stepped closer.
Victor Sloane had been photographed leaving a courthouse beside Judge Cole.
Another image showed him shaking hands with someone outside a private club.
“What does he have to do with Philadelphia?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“We?”
“Marco is checking.”
I folded my arms.
“You started an investigation while I was asleep.”
“You were not asleep.”
“That isn’t the point.”
Lucian rubbed his jaw.
His shirt sleeves were rolled up.
He looked exhausted.
Dangerous men in movies never looked tired.
Real ones did.
“Norah, somebody has been collecting information about you.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
He looked toward the desk.
There was a file.
He handed it to me.
Inside were photocopies of court documents.
Police reports.
Financial records.
I sat.
“Richard Cole handled organized crime prosecutions before becoming an appellate judge,” Lucian said. “Twenty years ago, he was an assistant state’s attorney.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“He prosecuted my uncle.”
I looked up.
“Your uncle?”
“Antonio Moretti.”
I knew Antonio had died in prison.
I didn’t know who sent him there.
“Richard Cole built his career on that conviction.”
“Was your uncle guilty?”
Lucian considered the question.
“Yes.”
I appreciated that he didn’t lie.
“But?”
“But evidence was manipulated.”
I frowned.
“Why would prosecutors need to manipulate evidence if he was guilty?”
“Because guilt and provability are not the same thing.”
“And Victor Sloane?”
“An investigator working with Cole’s office.”
I stared again at the photograph.
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared from public life twelve years ago.”
“Disappeared how?”
“Retired. No social media. No property under his own name. No obvious employment.”
“And now?”
“Marco found payments from a shell corporation linked to Sloane going to Ethan.”
My stomach tightened.
“Ethan was being paid?”
“Possibly.”
“For what?”
“That is the question.”
I closed the file.
“Yesterday wasn’t about jealousy.”
“Maybe some of it was.”
“But someone sent him.”
Lucian nodded.
A sick feeling settled inside me.
For three years, I had thought the worst thing about Ethan was that he had loved hurting me.
Now I was wondering whether even that part of my life had been manipulated by someone else.
“Did Ethan know who you were when we dated?”
“No evidence yet.”
“When did Sloane start paying him?”
“Four months before you met me.”
I froze.
“Say that again.”
Lucian did.
Four months before I met Lucian.
Which was nearly a year after leaving Ethan.
“What happened four months before we met?”
“You began working at St. Catherine’s.”
I remembered.
Hospital administration.
Terrible coffee.
Long nights.
The place where I first met Lucian after he brought one of his employees into the emergency department with a gunshot wound and argued with a vending machine because it ate his dollar.
“What does that matter?”
“St. Catherine’s handles several Moretti family medical trusts.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Maybe.”
“You think Ethan was paid because someone predicted I’d meet you?”
“No.”
Lucian’s eyes held mine.
“I think someone started watching you before you ever met me.”
A chill ran across my skin.
“Why?”
“We find out.”
By morning, Ethan Cole had disappeared.
His apartment was empty.
His phone was off.
His car had been found near Lake Michigan.
That should have frightened me.
Instead, I felt something worse.
Guilt.
“What if someone killed him?”
Marco looked at me from across the breakfast table.
“Mrs. Moretti—”
“Norah.”
He sighed.
“Norah, Ethan made enemies.”
“So have you.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
Marco glanced toward Lucian.
Lucian was reading something on a tablet.
“He means Ethan is an idiot,” my husband said.
Marco nodded gratefully.
“Exactly.”
I pushed away my breakfast.
“I want to speak to the police.”
Lucian looked up.
“About?”
“The photograph. Philadelphia. All of it.”
“All right.”
I blinked.
I had expected resistance.
“You agree?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“You’re the victim of a crime. Police should have the evidence.”
Marco coughed.
Lucian looked at him.
“Something to contribute?”
“No, boss.”
But I knew what surprised Marco.
The Moretti family traditionally did not invite police into problems.
I touched Lucian’s hand beneath the table.
He glanced at me.
Small compromises.
That was how our marriage worked.
Not because we lived in the same world.
Because we chose, every day, to build one in between.
Detective Lena Torres arrived that afternoon.
She was forty-something, sharp-eyed and apparently unimpressed by Lucian.
I liked her immediately.
“Mr. Moretti, your reputation precedes you.”
“Usually inaccurately.”
“I doubt that.”
“Usually.”
She looked at me.
“Mrs. Moretti?”
“Norah.”
We spent nearly two hours discussing Ethan.
Philadelphia.
The anonymous photographs.
Victor Sloane.
Detective Torres took notes.
When I finished, she closed the notebook.
“I need to ask something uncomfortable.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did Ethan ever suggest he knew Mr. Moretti before you did?”
“No.”
“Did he ever ask about organized crime?”
“No.”
“Judges?”
“Only his father.”
“Did he ever take photographs of you without permission?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
Lucian became very still.
Torres noticed.
“What kind?”
“Nothing sexual.”
“What kind?”
“Sleeping. Cooking. Reading. Sometimes he’d send them to me afterward.”
“Anything about them bother you?”
“Everything Ethan did eventually bothered me.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
I thought.
Then remembered.
“He used to photograph my hands.”
Torres frowned.
“My hands, my earrings, my necklace. Close-ups.”
Lucian looked at me.
“What necklace?”
“The one my mother gave me.”
“Where is it?”
“Upstairs.”
Lucian rose.
Torres lifted a hand.
“Don’t touch it.”
Fifteen minutes later, a police technician examined the necklace.
I watched his expression change.
“What?”
He looked at Detective Torres.
“There’s something inside the clasp.”
The clasp was larger than normal.
A tiny metal component was extracted.
Marco swore.
“What is it?”
The technician stared at me.
“Old GPS hardware.”
My knees nearly gave out.
“How old?”
“Could be several years.”
Lucian caught my arm.
I stared at the necklace.
My mother had not actually bought it.
Ethan had.
He had given it to her before my birthday.
She thought he was being thoughtful.
He had been tracking me.
For years.
Detective Torres put the necklace into an evidence bag.
“Now we have something.”
But Lucian was staring at the device.
“No.”
Torres looked at him.
“No what?”
“That battery wouldn’t last three years.”
The technician nodded.
“He’s right.”
I felt sick.
“So whoever tracked it—”
“Would need proximity to recharge or replace it,” Lucian said.
“Unless the hardware was modified.”
Torres frowned.
“Meaning?”
Lucian looked toward the ceiling.
Then around the room.
“Our house has been compromised.”
Security swept the estate.
They found nothing in the bedroom.
Nothing in the kitchen.
Nothing in my car.
At 4:17 p.m., Marco found a listening device inside the library.
At 4:31, another appeared beneath my desk.
At 5:02, a third was discovered in the nursery.
The nursery.
A room we had not yet told anyone would become a nursery.
I stood in the doorway while a security technician removed the microphone from beneath a window ledge.
Lucian stared at it.
His face went white.
“Who knew?” I whispered.
“No one.”
“Then how—”
The technician interrupted.
“This device was installed recently.”
“How recently?” Lucian asked.
“Adhesive’s fresh. Maybe seventy-two hours.”
Lucian looked at Marco.
“We were in New York.”
Marco’s expression hardened.
“Staff?”
“Screen everyone.”
A maid began crying in the hallway.
Someone shouted downstairs.
Then one of Lucian’s guards came running.
“Boss!”
“What?”
“We found somebody outside the east fence.”
Everyone moved at once.
By the time we reached the security room, two guards had dragged in a bleeding man.
Ethan.
His shirt was torn.
One eye swollen shut.
His wrists were bound with plastic cable ties.
I stared.
“Ethan?”
He looked up at me.
For once, there was no arrogance in his face.
Only terror.
Lucian stepped forward.
“Who did this?”
Ethan laughed weakly.
“You think I came here for you?”
“Answer me.”
“They’re going to kill her.”
Lucian grabbed his shirt.
“Who?”
Ethan looked at me.
“Norah.”
My pulse thundered.
“Tell us.”
He swallowed.
“Your mother.”
I stared.
“My mother died six years ago.”
Ethan shook his head.
“No.”
May you like
The room became silent.
“She didn’t.”
Related Stories
