Chapter 5 - THE HOUSE OF GHOSTS
I woke up angry.
That surprised me.
Not afraid.
Not confused.
Angry.
My skull throbbed. My mouth tasted metallic. My left shoulder pressed against cold concrete, and something heavy was draped over me.
Damian’s coat.
Memory returned in pieces.
Storage unit.
White gas.
Victor’s voice.
I sat up too quickly.
“Easy.”
Damian was beside me.
Alive.
Relief hit so hard I hated it.
Gabriel sat against the opposite wall with one hand pressed to a cut above his eyebrow.
Three security men were unconscious but breathing.
The overhead lights were still on.
The gas had stopped.
“How long?”
“Four minutes,” Damian said.
“That’s all?”
“Nonlethal incapacitating agent.”
Gabriel groaned.
“Very considerate of Victor.”
I looked toward the steel gate.
Still closed.
“Why aren’t we dead?”
Damian’s expression answered before his voice did.
“Because killing us wasn’t the point.”
A monitor mounted high on the wall flickered on.
Victor appeared.
He sat somewhere dark, wearing a charcoal suit as if he had not spent the entire night attacking a mansion and trapping people inside storage facilities.
“Good morning.”
Damian stood.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Victor smiled.
“That temper again.”
“Open the gate.”
“No.”
“Then why keep us alive?”
Victor looked toward me.
“Because Harper has something I need.”
I stared at the screen.
“The flash drive?”
“Very good.”
“I don’t have it.”
“I know.”
That chilled me.
“Then what do you want?”
“To know where you moved it.”
“I didn’t.”
Victor leaned closer to the camera.
“Harper, Tyler told me many things about you. Most were unkind. But he repeatedly described you as cautious.”
I said nothing.
“You would never hide your only protection in the first place Tyler would look.”
My heartbeat changed.
Damian looked at me.
Victor noticed.
“There.”
His smile widened.
“That face.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
For six years, I had remembered hiding the copied files in my jewelry box.
But I had forgotten something else.
The next morning, terrified Tyler might search my things, I moved the flash drive.
Not to another bag.
Not to a drawer.
To the lining of an old winter coat I had donated before leaving Milwaukee.
Or thought I had donated.
I looked at the suitcase.
My college sweatshirt.
My old clothes.
If Tyler had kept everything—
No.
Victor could see too much already.
I flattened my expression.
“You’re wasting your time.”
“Perhaps.”
The screen went black.
Gabriel dragged himself upright.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
“Nothing.”
Damian looked at me.
“Harper.”
I hated that he knew.
“I moved it.”
“Where?”
“An old coat.”
Gabriel looked around.
“Here?”
“I don’t know.”
We tore through the suitcase.
No coat.
Then Damian saw the wooden chest.
Inside were sealed bags of clothing.
At the bottom was a red wool coat.
My coat.
I stared at it.
My mother had bought it when I graduated from college.
Tyler hated it.
Said red made people stare at me.
After we started dating, I stopped wearing it.
I took it from Damian.
My fingers found the torn seam beneath the collar.
Something hard sat inside.
The flash drive slid into my palm.
Six years of fear.
Smaller than my thumb.
Gabriel let out a low breath.
“Harper Ellison.”
“What?”
“You may be my favorite employee.”
“I don’t work for you.”
“You definitely do not.”
Damian held out his hand.
I hesitated.
Not because I didn’t trust him.
That realization surprised me too.
I gave him the drive.
He looked at it.
“This is what Luca died for.”
“Maybe.”
“And Victor has spent six years trying to erase.”
“Yes.”
His eyes lifted.
“This ends.”
An emergency release finally opened the gate twelve minutes later after Gabriel’s outside team cut power to the storage facility.
Back at the estate, the flash drive went into an isolated computer.
There were hundreds of files.
Port manifests.
Bank records.
Names.
Photographs.
Payments.
Videos.
Then one file stopped Damian cold.
LUCA.
Gabriel opened it.
The video had been recorded from Tyler’s laptop webcam.
Victor and Tyler stood in a Milwaukee apartment discussing Luca Romano.
The audio was clear.
Luca had discovered that Victor was allowing human traffickers to move women through Romano-controlled warehouses.
Luca threatened to expose him.
Victor ordered him silenced.
Damian watched without blinking.
Then Victor said something worse.
“If Luca tells Damian, both brothers become a problem.”
The recording ended.
Damian stepped away from the computer.
“He wanted me dead too.”
Gabriel nodded.
“For years.”
I watched grief and rage compete behind Damian’s eyes.
He walked out without speaking.
I found him fifteen minutes later in the greenhouse.
Rain tapped against glass.
He stood among rows of white orchids with both hands braced against a stone table.
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m rarely alone.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
He looked at me.
“What did you mean?”
I stepped closer.
“I know what it’s like to build your life around surviving something and then realize the thing you survived never actually ended.”
His expression shifted.
“You think we’re the same?”
“No.”
I gave him a small smile.
“You have better suits.”
That made him laugh.
Once.
Quietly.
It was the first real laugh I had ever heard from him.
It changed his face completely.
Dangerous men should not be allowed to look younger when they smiled.
It created confusion.
His gaze settled on me.
“You make jokes when you’re afraid.”
“I make jokes when everyone around me looks homicidal.”
“Useful survival skill.”
“I thought so.”
Silence stretched.
Not uncomfortable.
Just dangerous in a different way.
Damian stepped closer.
Then stopped.
Again.
Always stopping now.
Always leaving the last foot of distance to me.
“What Tyler did to you,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
The old version of me would have said it was fine.
It wasn’t that bad.
Other people had worse.
Instead, I said, “Thank you.”
Damian nodded.
“I won’t touch you without warning again.”
Something tightened in my chest.
“Ever?”
His eyes held mine.
“Unless you ask.”
The greenhouse suddenly felt warmer.
I should have stepped backward.
Instead, I stepped forward.
One foot.
The distance disappeared.
Damian didn’t move.
“Harper.”
“What?”
“If you’re doing this because you think you owe me for saving you—”
“I’m not.”
“If you’re afraid—”
“I am.”
His brow tightened.
“But not of you.”
Then I kissed him.
It was brief.
Careful.
Nothing like the dramatic kisses in movies where people crashed into walls and forgot how oxygen worked.
His hands stayed at his sides.
He let me control everything.
And that mattered more than I could explain.
When I pulled back, Damian’s expression looked almost offended by his own restraint.
“That,” he said quietly, “was unwise.”
“Probably.”
“Again?”
I smiled.
“Definitely unwise.”
Before I could answer, the greenhouse doors burst open.
Gabriel.
Blood on his shirt.
“Damian.”
Everything changed instantly.
“What happened?”
“Tyler escaped.”
My stomach dropped.
“How?”
“Someone inside opened the holding room.”
“Victor?”
“Remote access.”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Tyler took two guards down. Stole a car.”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“Track it.”
“We are.”
Gabriel looked at me.
“He left something.”
“What?”
Gabriel handed me a phone.
A video was already playing.
Tyler sat inside a moving vehicle.
“Harper,” he said to the camera. “You always wanted to know why I kept your things.”
My stomach turned.
“It wasn’t because I missed you.”
He smiled.
“It was insurance.”
The camera shifted.
A woman appeared beside him.
Bound.
Gagged.
I recognized her instantly.
Rosa Martinez.
The housekeeper who trained me my first day.
The woman who smuggled me coffee during twelve-hour shifts.
Tyler pressed a gun against her ribs.
“If you want Rosa alive, you come alone.”
The video ended.
“No,” Damian said immediately.
I looked at him.
“He has Rosa.”
“No.”
“This happened because of me.”
“No. It happened because Tyler is violent.”
“He’ll kill her.”
“He’ll kill both of you.”
“I can’t sit here.”
“You aren’t going.”
Something inside me snapped.
“For six years, every decision I made was based on what Tyler might do if he found me.”
Damian went silent.
“I changed apartments. Jobs. Friends. I stopped dating. I made myself smaller because I thought invisible meant safe.”
I looked at the phone.
“It didn’t.”
“Harper—”
“I am done letting that man choose what kind of person I get to be.”
Damian stared at me.
Then Gabriel said, “We can use the meeting.”
Damian looked ready to fire his own cousin.
“Explain quickly.”
“We put a tracker on Harper.”
“No.”
“I wasn’t asking you.”
They both looked at me.
I almost smiled.
“Good.”
Forty minutes later, I walked alone into an abandoned rail depot on the southern edge of Chicago.
At least, I appeared alone.
Gabriel had a team positioned six blocks out.
Damian was supposed to remain in the command vehicle.
I had absolutely no faith that he would.
A tiny transmitter sat beneath the seam of my jacket.
The depot smelled like rust and rain.
“Tyler?”
My voice echoed.
A light came on.
Rosa sat tied to a chair.
Alive.
I ran toward her.
“Harper, no!”
Too late.
A steel door slammed behind me.
Tyler stepped from the shadows.
Gun in hand.
“I knew you’d come.”
“Let her go.”
He smiled.
“You used to say that to me too.”
My skin crawled.
“I’m not twenty-five anymore.”
“No.”
His gaze moved over me.
“You’re worse.”
“What do you want?”
“The drive.”
“You know Damian has it.”
“I know.”
“Then why am I here?”
Tyler’s smile disappeared.
“Because Victor doesn’t need the drive anymore.”
A terrible feeling crawled over me.
“What does he need?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“Because Damian Romano now has one weakness everyone in Chicago can see.”
He lifted the gun.
I heard movement above us.
Not Gabriel.
Not Damian.
More men.
Tyler looked toward the rafters.
Then back at me.
“You.”
The lights went out.
Gunfire exploded.
I dropped beside Rosa.
Someone grabbed me from behind.
I screamed and fought.
A cloth covered my mouth.
I bit through it.
An unfamiliar man cursed.
I kicked backward.
Another arm locked around my waist.
The last thing I heard through the chaos was Damian shouting my name.
Then someone drove a needle into my neck.
My knees collapsed.
As darkness swallowed me, Tyler’s voice came from somewhere nearby.
“Sorry, Harper.”
A car door slammed.
An engine roared.
And when I opened my eyes again, Damian was gone.
So was Chicago.
May you like
Victor Crane sat across from me inside a private airplane.
And beneath us, the city lights were disappearing.
