Chapter 3 - Ghosts in the Mist
The subterranean tunnel ended at an iron hatch hidden behind false stone masonry on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.
Cold October wind slammed into us the second I slammed the hatch open. Waves churned violently against the breakwater, throwing gray foam into the mist. Rain had started to fall—thick, freezing needles that soaked through my suit jacket in seconds.
“Into the boat! Eleanor, climb down!”
The twenty-eight-foot rigid inflatable boat bobbed aggressively inside the private boathouse slip. I lowered Gabriel and Lucas down to Eleanor’s waiting arms, then grabbed Matthew and Noah, shielding their small bodies against the freezing spray with my coat.
Noah, who hadn't spoken a single word since I walked into the dining room, suddenly clutched the lapels of my coat. His teeth were chattering, but his amber eyes locked onto mine with fierce intensity.
“You smell like Mommy’s box,” he whispered.
My throat burned. “What box, buddy?”
“The wooden box with the brass lock,” he said, shivering violently. “Eleanor lets us smell it when we miss her. It smells like paper and lavender. You smell like that.”
I didn't answer. I couldn't. I simply pressed my forehead against his wet curls for half a second before lowering him into Eleanor’s arms beside his brothers.
Above the bluff, through the dense pine trees that shielded the estate, flashing blue and red emergency lights illuminated the gray sky. Sirens wailed in the distance. The Chicago Police Department was finally responding to the gunfire, but they were too late. The tactical team had already cleared the house.
I jumped into the boat, severed the heavy mooring lines with a serrated dive knife kept in the bulkhead, and twisted the dual ignition keys.
The twin Yamaha 250-horsepower outboards roared to life with a deep, throaty growl that cut through the sound of the surf.
I engaged the throttle and backed out of the slip into the churning open water just as three tactical operatives emerged onto the cliff above us. Through the blinding rain, I saw the muzzle flashes.
*Prak-prak-prak-prak!*
Bullets chewed through the lake water around us, one round shattering the fiberglass fairing of the boat's center console inches from my left shoulder.
“Head down!” I screamed, throwing the throttle wide open.
The RIB surged forward, slamming through the four-foot swells with punishing force. The roar of the engines drowned out the gunfire behind us as we plunged into the heavy fog bank rolling across the lake. Within three minutes, the lights of the Chicago shoreline disappeared into an impenetrable gray void.
We were alone on the lake. Cold. Soaked. And hunted.
I eased the throttle back to half-power once we cleared the shipping lanes, letting the boat cut smoothly through the calmer deep water toward an abandoned marina I owned in Kenosha, Wisconsin—an old shipping dock acquired during a logistics acquisition three years ago that existed only as an obscure subsidiary on Moretti Holdings’ balance sheets.
Eleanor had wrapped all four boys in thermal emergency blankets from the deck storage box. They sat huddled together in the bow seat, four tiny silver-wrapped bundles, clinging to each other like a litter of wolves in a storm.
I pulled out my encrypted satellite phone—the only device I owned that bypassed public cellular networks—and dialed a twelve-digit sequence from memory.
It rang four times before a gravelly voice answered.
*“Speak.”*
“Marcus. It’s Alexander.”
A sharp pause on the other end. Marcus Vance had been my corporate counsel and closest confidant for twenty-five years. He was the only man alive who had known my father, built Moretti Holdings alongside me, and held power of attorney over all my personal estates.
*“Alexander? My God! I just received an alert from the private monitoring team. They said there was a full assault on the Gold Coast manor! Frank isn't answering his transponder. Where are you? Are you hit?”*
His voice was thick with panic—the genuine terror of a lifelong friend.
“I’m alive, Marcus,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the navigational GPS display on the console. “I’m on the water. I got out through the south tunnel.”
*“Thank God. Stay where you are. I’m mobilizing private security from our Schaumburg facility. Where can we rendezvous?”*
I opened my mouth to give him the coordinates for the Kenosha slip. My tongue moved.
And then, Sophia’s handwriting flashed across the back of my eyelids:
*THE PERSON POISONING ME IS SITTING ON HIS BOARD OF DIRECTORS.*
There were only seven people on the executive board of Moretti Holdings. Four were institutional venture capitalists who lived in New York and London. One was our chief financial officer, a sixty-year-old accountant who spent eleven months of the year in Naples.
The remaining two were Marcus Vance… and Julian Moretti.
My brother.
Julian had been exiled from the company four years ago after an internal audit revealed he had embezzled thirty million dollars through offshore shell companies. He had sworn vengeance when I stripped him of his shares and had him removed from the boardroom by armed guards. But Julian was supposed to be living under court-ordered supervision in Miami.
Marcus, however… Marcus had access to my house. Marcus knew Sophia’s daily schedule down to the minute. Marcus had recommended the private medical concierges who treated her before she left for Zurich.
My stomach churned with cold bile.
“Alexander? Are you there?” Marcus’s voice pressed through the receiver. “Give me your location. We need to extract you before they trace your boat’s transponder.”
“I’m heading toward Gary, Indiana,” I lied smoothly, steering the boat due north toward Wisconsin. “The storm is heavy. I’ll dock near the industrial canal behind the steel mill in two hours. Send a clean car. No local police.”
*“I’m on it. Stay dark until you see my headlights. Two flashes, then one.”*
“Understood,” I said, and disconnected the call.
I immediately brought up the vessel’s utility menu, located the GPS transponder breaker, and smashed the toggle switch downward with the heel of my palm. The digital locator died.
We were completely off the grid.
I turned back to Eleanor. She was watching me, her eyes hollow, reading every calculation crossing my face.
“You suspect Marcus,” she said quietly.
“I suspect everyone who shares my air,” I answered, my voice like iron. “Sophia wrote that the killer is on my board. Who told you to bring the boys to the house today, Eleanor? You kept them hidden for four years. Why bring them to my dining table on a random Tuesday?”
Eleanor pulled her coat tighter around her shivering frame. “Because I received an anonymous courier this morning at seven o’clock. A sealed envelope with Sophia’s signature on the wax seal. Inside was a single key, a bank vault receipt from the Federal Depository downtown, and a typewritten note: *THE CLOCK HAS RUN OUT. TAKE THE BOYS HOME TODAY. THE WOLVES ARE COMING.*”
She looked at me, her eyes filled with agony. “I thought you sent it, Alexander. I thought you had finally discovered the truth and were bringing us in from the cold.”
I stared at her through the mist, the implications crashing over me like rogue waves.
May you like
Whoever was hunting my sons hadn't stumbled onto them by accident. They had flushed them out into the open intentionally. They had engineered this entire day to put all four of Sophia’s children in one place—so they could slaughter my entire legacy in a single stroke.
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