Chapter 2 - THE GHOST IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
I stared at Dorothy’s weathered face, my hand still gripping the edge of the mahogany desk.
“What did you just say?”
My voice was a rough whisper, but in the dead silence of the study, it sounded like a gunshot.
Dorothy didn’t back down. She had changed my bandages when I was a reckless teenager. She had cleaned the blood off my knuckles when I took over my father’s empire. She was the only person breathing who wasn’t terrified of my temper.
“She is Elias’s daughter,” Dorothy repeated, her voice steady, though her hands trembled slightly as she smoothed her cardigan. “Tessa is Elias’s daughter.”
Elias.
The name I hadn’t allowed spoken in this house for two decades.
Twenty-three years ago, Elias had been my right hand. My shadow. The only man I trusted in a city built on deception. And then, during the harbor fallout, when the feds were closing in and my father’s enemies were ready to bury us both, Elias had taken the fall. He took the charges, the blame, and the bullet that was meant for me.
His dying request, bleeding out in the back of my town car, wasn’t for money.
“I have a daughter. Keep your world away from her. Promise me you will never look for her. If your enemies know she exists, she dies. Let her be a ghost.”
I made the promise. I buried him. I never looked.
I looked down at the photograph again. The smiling nineteen-year-old girl. The girl who had grown up to quietly clean my floors, press my shirts, and make sure my blood pressure didn't kill me in my sleep.
“Why?” I asked, the word catching in my throat. “If I was supposed to stay away from her, why did she come here?”
“Because she knew you were dying inside,” Dorothy said softly. “She watched you from afar for years. She saw the men you destroyed, and the man you were becoming. She came here to see if the man her father died for was worth the price he paid.”
I felt a sudden, crushing weight in my chest.
For four years, the daughter of the man who saved my life had been carrying my dirty laundry. I had paid her minimum wage. I had never said thank you. I had never even looked her in the eye.
“I have to find her,” I said, stepping around the desk.
“You can’t,” Dorothy said. “She left because she found out Silas is back in Boston.”
I froze. Silas. The man who had pulled the trigger on Elias twenty-three years ago. I had driven him out of the city, ruined his operations, stripped him of everything. If Silas was back, he would be looking for weaknesses.
He would be looking for Elias’s ghost.
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the study swung open. Brendan, my security chief, stood in the frame. His face was pale. He held a tablet in his hand.
“Boss. We pulled the traffic cameras from the street the night Tessa left.”
“And?” I demanded.
Brendan walked over and placed the tablet on my desk. He tapped the screen.
The grainy black-and-white footage showed Tessa walking down the rain-slicked pavement at 2:15 AM. She was carrying a single duffel bag.
But my eyes didn't stay on her.
My heart completely stopped.
Tessa wasn’t alone. Her free hand was tightly holding the hand of a little boy. He looked about six years old, wearing a coat too thin for the weather, clutching a small, stuffed bear.
I looked up at Brendan. “Whose child is that?”
Brendan swallowed hard. “I ran facial recognition on the kid just to be sure. Boss… the boy is a perfect match to Elias’s old file photos. He’s Tessa’s son.”
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I stared at the screen. Elias’s grandson. Out there in the cold. With Silas back in the city.
“Get the cars,” I said, my voice dropping to a lethal calm. “Now.”
