Chapter 4 - THE GHOST OF THE EAST RIVER
-4
By late afternoon, the estate had returned to a strange, heavy quiet. The guards patrolling the perimeter were doubled, but the frantic, paranoid energy that had defined my life for thirty-four years had shifted into something entirely new.
I stood in my private study, staring out the French doors toward the West Wing gardens where Sofia was chasing a stray butterfly across the manicured lawn while Elena sat on a white wooden bench, watching her with a quiet, protective smile.
The door behind me opened softly.
Paulie stepped into the room, holding a slim, weathered manila folder that looked decades old.
"Boss," Paulie said, his voice hesitant. "We cleared out Celeste's private safe deposit box at the downtown commercial bank, per your instructions. We found her asset transfers... and we found this."
He handed the folder to me.
I took it, my fingers tracing the faded paper label stuck to the front: PIER 44 - INVESTIGATION ARCHIVE - INTERNAL EYES ONLY.
My breath hitched.
"Where did she get this?" I asked, my voice tightening.
"She didn't steal it from your father's files," Paulie replied grimly. "She stole it from the district attorney's internal evidence locker three years ago when she was an intern. It’s the original police report from the night of the fire—the one your father paid off the lead detective to suppress."
I didn't wait for Paulie to elaborate. I flipped open the folder.
Inside were handwritten witness statements, photographs of the charred dock, and a signed coroner's addendum that made my blood run cold.
The body found in the ruins of the warehouse wasn't an unclaimed John Doe from a county morgue, as my father had told me.
It was a young dock worker named Liam Vance—Arthur Vance’s own estranged nephew, who had stumbled onto the smuggling ring a week before the fire. My father had killed the wrong man, framing the disaster as an attack on the Rossi family to justify wiping them out and seizing the East River shipping lanes.
And Ewan?
Ewan hadn't disappeared because he was a coward or because he was bought off.
A handwritten letter tucked into the back of the folder—dated six years ago, bearing Ewan’s actual handwriting—tore the last remaining illusions from my eyes.
“Dear Daniel,” the letter read.
“If you’re reading this, it means Father finally succeeded in eliminating me, or I managed to run far enough away that I could never come back. I found the ledgers, Daniel. I found out what he did to the Rossis on the East River. He didn't just take their docks—he murdered a dozen innocent people and pinned it on a warehouse accident to cover up his own greed. I tried to confront him, and he told me I had two choices: take the blame as a corporate embezzler and vanish, or watch him frame you for federal racketeering. I chose to walk away so you could keep living in the dark. I’m sorry I couldn't tell you the truth to your face. Take care of yourself, little brother. Don't let the house swallow you whole.”
The paper trembled in my hands.
Six years. Six years of believing my brother was a coward who had abandoned me. Six years of living in the shadow of a lie constructed by the monster who raised me.
"Paulie," I said, my voice dropping into a low, terrifying hum that made my enforcer step back.
May you like
"Boss?"
"Find him," I ordered, my eyes locked onto the handwritten signature at the bottom of the page. "Ewan. Find out where he went when he walked out of Chicago six years ago. I don't care if he's in Seattle, Europe, or the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I want my brother home."
