Chapter 5 - THE GHOST IN THE COAT
The words hit me like a physical blow.
Your father isn't dead. He’s the one who took my mother.
I stumbled backward, hitting the doorframe.
“No,” I said, shaking my head violently. “No, that’s impossible. My grandfather buried him. I saw the casket.”
Luca walked over to me.
He didn't look angry at me. He looked deeply, profoundly sorry.
“You saw a closed casket, Natalie. And we just saw that it was empty. Your grandfather lied to you.”
“Why would my father take your mother?!” I cried, tears spilling hot and fast down my cheeks. “He was a jazz musician! He wasn't a criminal!”
Luca looked at the heavy wool coat resting on the sofa.
“He was a musician,” Luca said quietly. “But he was also the only man who knew where my father hid the family’s emergency funds.”
Marco looked up from the train ticket.
“The offshore accounts?”
Luca nodded.
“Twenty years ago, my father knew the New York families were coming for him. He trusted Jonathan Brooks to hide the account ledgers. When the club burned down, New York thought the ledgers burned with your father.”
Luca looked back at me.
“But your father didn't die. He took the ledgers and vanished. To protect you.”
I couldn't process it.
My father was alive.
He had let me grow up an orphan. He had let me scrub floors to pay for my grandfather’s funeral.
“Why would he come back now?” I whispered.
“Because of the apprentice,” Luca said. “Arthur.”
Luca began pacing the ruined sitting room.
“Arthur didn't die in that warehouse fire five years ago. He found out about the ledgers. He found out your father was alive. Arthur approached Vanessa to get into this house, plant the bug, and draw your father out.”
Marco frowned.
“But if Arthur took Rosa... why leave Jonathan’s train ticket?”
Luca stopped pacing.
His dark eyes narrowed.
“He didn't. Arthur didn't take my mother.”
He pointed at the heavy wool coat.
“Your father took her.”
My heart hammered in my chest.
“To trade her for me,” I realized, the horrifying truth settling in. “Arthur knows who I am. He threatened me on the recording. My father came out of hiding to protect me. He took your mother as leverage.”
Luca looked at me, his expression softening for a fraction of a second.
“He took the only thing I care about, to make sure I protect the only thing he cares about.”
Before I could say anything, a sharp groan came from the corner of the room.
One of the unconscious guards was waking up.
Luca was beside him in an instant, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him up.
“Who hit you?” Luca demanded.
The guard blinked, confused and bleeding from a cut on his head.
“It was... it was a man, Boss. Older. Gray hair. He moved fast.”
“Where did he take Rosa and Vanessa?”
The guard winced.
“He didn't take Vanessa, sir. She went with the other guy.”
Luca froze.
“What other guy?”
“The guy in the suit. The one who called himself Arthur. Vanessa let him in the side door. She told us to stand down, and then Arthur hit us.”
The room went completely silent.
Vanessa hadn't been kidnapped.
She had conspired with Arthur.
She had let the enemy into the house.
Luca dropped the guard back against the wall.
He stood up, his face a mask of pure, lethal fury.
“Marco.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Find Vanessa. If she tries to leave the city, burn her car to the ground.”
Luca turned to me.
He didn't look like the man who had gently asked me to play the piano a few hours ago.
He looked like the head of the Chicago mafia.
“Your father has my mother, Natalie. I will do whatever it takes to get her back.”
I swallowed the lump of terror in my throat.
“I know.”
“Do you know where he would take her?”
I thought desperately.
Where would a ghost hide in a city he hadn't seen in twenty years?
Then, a memory surfaced.
My grandfather’s piano workshop.
We had sold the equipment, but the building itself had been abandoned for years, locked up in probate court.
“The old workshop,” I said. “On 4th and Elm. Nobody has been inside for five years.”
Luca didn't hesitate.
“Let's go.”
We left the mansion and tore through the wet, dark streets of Chicago.
We arrived at the dilapidated brick building just before 3:00 AM.
The windows were boarded up, and the street was empty.
Luca pulled his gun.
He gestured for Marco’s men to surround the building.
He looked at me.
“Stay in the car, Natalie. Lock the doors.”
“No,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt.
Luca frowned.
“It isn't safe.”
“He’s my father, Luca. If you walk in there with guns drawn, he might panic. Let me go first.”
Luca stared at me.
He saw the fierce determination in my eyes, the same stubbornness that had made me refuse to apologize to Vanessa.
He nodded slowly.
“You walk in front. I will be right behind you.”
We approached the heavy wooden side door.
The padlock had been broken off.
I pushed the door open.
It creaked loudly in the silent night.
The workshop smelled of old wood, dust, and damp brick.
Moonlight filtered through the cracks in the boards, illuminating covered shapes of old pianos.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice shaking.
Nothing but silence.
We moved deeper into the workshop.
Suddenly, a light flicked on in the back office.
A single, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Standing in the center of the room, holding a revolver, was a man.
He looked older, tired, with graying hair and deep lines around his eyes.
But I recognized him instantly from the photographs my grandfather had kept.
It was my father.
Jonathan Brooks.
He looked at me, his eyes filling with tears.
“Natalie,” he whispered.
I couldn't speak. I just stared at the ghost standing in front of me.
Luca stepped out from the shadows behind me, his gun aimed directly at my father’s chest.
“Where is my mother, Jonathan?” Luca asked coldly.
My father didn't raise his weapon.
He looked at Luca with profound sadness.
“I don't have her, Luca.”
Luca’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“Don't lie to me. We found her bracelet in your empty grave.”
“I put it there,” my father said quietly.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a delicate, pearl rosary.
He tossed it onto the dusty desk between them.
Luca stared at it.
“That’s Vanessa’s rosary,” Luca said.
“Arthur took your mother, Luca,” my father said, his voice heavy with regret. “Vanessa helped him. They used me as a decoy. They knew you would follow the breadcrumbs I left, while they took Rosa to the real exchange point.”
My father looked at me, a tear finally escaping his eye.
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“I’m sorry, Natalie. I tried to stop them. But Arthur has the ledgers now. And if we don't get there in twenty minutes, he’s going to kill Rosa.”
TITLE: THE PEARL ROSARY
