Chapter 9 - THE RING AND THE WARNING
Z
Being engaged to Ethan Callahan lasted exactly nine hours before someone tried to ruin it.
Which, in hindsight, was probably longer than I should have expected.
By the time our flight landed in Los Angeles, Sophie had slept through almost the entire second half of the trip, Ethan had answered twelve encrypted calls without once leaving his seat, and I had looked at the ring on my finger so many times that the woman across the aisle finally smiled and said, “Honey, it’s still there.”
I smiled back.
“I know.”
Ethan glanced at me.
“You’ve checked seventeen times.”
“You counted?”
“I count everything.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
Outside the terminal, two black SUVs waited.
Of course they did.
I had insisted we didn’t need an entire security detail to clean out my mother’s apartment.
Ethan had replied that he wasn’t bringing an entire security detail.
Apparently six armed men was considered moderate.
“Elena gets here tomorrow,” I said as we climbed inside.
“She texted.”
“You read my sister’s texts now?”
“She texted me.”
I stared at him.
“She has your number?”
“Apparently.”
“When did that happen?”
“When she decided I was easier to reach than you.”
“That traitor.”
Sophie squealed from her car seat.
Ethan glanced back.
“Your daughter agrees with me.”
“Our daughter is six months old and thinks socks are food.”
“She has instincts.”
I smiled despite myself.
There were moments now when everything felt almost normal.
That terrified me.
Because normal had never lasted very long in my life.
We reached my mother’s old apartment just after noon.
Nothing had changed.
Same pale building.
Same cracked staircase.
Same bougainvillea growing over the side fence like it was trying to escape.
I stood on the sidewalk holding Sophie while Ethan watched me.
“You okay?”
“Ask me in three hours.”
Inside, the apartment still smelled faintly like lavender cleaner.
Mom had been dead for almost two years.
I had kept paying the small storage fee attached to the unit because cleaning everything out had felt too final.
Now final had arrived.
Boxes filled the living room.
Old family photographs.
Elena’s high-school certificates.
My first diner apron.
Dad’s tools.
Ethan picked up an old picture of my parents.
Mom looked twenty-five.
Dad had one arm around her waist.
“They looked happy,” Ethan said.
“They were.”
“Were?”
“Until Dad died.”
Ethan put the photograph down.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at him.
“I know.”
That was the strangest thing about us.
He never apologized unnecessarily.
When he said sorry, he meant it.
We spent hours sorting.
Keep.
Donate.
Trash.
By evening, Sophie slept inside a portable crib in my old bedroom.
Ethan stood in the kitchen opening cabinets.
“What are you looking for?”
“Coffee.”
“Top shelf.”
He opened it.
Empty.
I laughed.
“Apparently Mom had better priorities.”
He looked offended.
Then the doorbell rang.
All humor disappeared from his face.
One of his guards approached the door first.
“Stay here,” Ethan said.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The ordering.”
“Rachel.”
“I’m staying here.”
He gave me a look.
“I was literally agreeing with you.”
The guard checked the peephole.
“Package.”
“From who?”
“No courier.”
Ethan walked over.
The guard opened the door carefully.
A white box sat on the floor.
No label.
No address.
My stomach dropped.
Ethan did not touch it.
“Declan.”
“I’m checking the cameras.”
Declan’s voice came through Ethan’s phone from Chicago.
Apparently he was involved remotely because, as Margaret put it, Ethan trusted only three people and one of them still wore diapers.
The building camera showed a man in a baseball cap leaving the package less than four minutes earlier.
Face hidden.
“Get Sophie,” Ethan said.
I didn’t argue.
That scared me more than the box.
Ten minutes later, we stood outside while one of Ethan’s security men opened it.
No explosive.
No wires.
Just a photograph.
The guard brought it toward us inside a clear evidence bag.
I stared.
It was a picture of me, Ethan, and Sophie getting off the plane that morning.
Taken from somewhere above us.
On the back, one sentence had been written.
A KING SHOULD KNOW WHEN TO LEAVE ANOTHER MAN’S CITY.
I felt Ethan go still beside me.
“Roman,” I whispered.
He said nothing.
“Roman Marconi?”
“Yes.”
“But this is Los Angeles.”
“He has people everywhere.”
“Apparently.”
I looked at Sophie.
Her tiny hand gripped my shirt.
Fear tightened my throat.
“We should go back to Chicago.”
“No.”
I looked at Ethan.
“No?”
“You came here to deal with your mother’s apartment.”
“Somebody just photographed our child.”
“That doesn’t mean you stop living.”
“That’s rich coming from the man with bulletproof glass in his kitchen.”
“I don’t have bulletproof glass in the kitchen.”
“Dining room?”
He paused.
“That’s not the point.”
I almost laughed.
Almost.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I stared at the screen.
Ethan noticed.
“Don’t answer.”
I answered.
“Hello?”
A man breathed quietly.
Then spoke.
“Congratulations, Rachel.”
My blood went cold.
I knew that voice.
I had heard it once before through a speakerphone.
Roman Marconi.
“You have something of mine.”
“Your son’s terrible taste in wedding venues?”
Ethan’s eyes closed briefly.
Roman chuckled.
“You’re brave.”
“No. I’m tired.”
“Good. Tired people make mistakes.”
“What do you want?”
“My family back.”
“Adrian is alive.”
“My family is larger than Adrian.”
I looked at Ethan.
Roman continued.
“Your fiancé has been dismantling businesses he has no right to touch.”
“They were his family’s.”
“They were mine too.”
“So sue him.”
Silence.
Then Roman laughed softly.
“I understand why he likes you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
His tone changed.
Became colder.
“Because men like Ethan do not love gently.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know what happens to women who stand beside Callahan men.”
My heart stumbled.
Ethan reached for the phone.
I moved away.
Roman continued.
“Ask him about Isabelle.”
Everything inside Ethan stopped.
I saw it.
Not the usual stillness.
This was different.
A wound reopening.
“Who is Isabelle?”
Roman hung up.
I stared at Ethan.
His face had gone pale.
“Who is Isabelle?”
He didn’t answer.
“Ethan.”
His jaw tightened.
“She was my wife.”
The air disappeared from my lungs.
I knew he had lost a daughter.
I knew the child’s mother had died.
I had never heard her name.
“What does Roman know about her?”
Ethan looked toward the apartment building.
Then at me.
“More than I thought.”
I felt something cold move through my chest.
“Was Patrick responsible for her death?”
“That’s what I believed.”
“What do you believe now?”
His silence was the answer.
I looked down at my engagement ring.
Nine hours.
That was how long I had enjoyed being engaged before the dead reached into our future.
And suddenly I understood something terrifying.
May you like
Patrick Callahan might have been behind bars.
But the story we thought had ended at Navy Pier had only been the first half.
