Chapter 2 - The Call in the Dark
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The heavy oak doors of the penthouse clicked shut, plunging the apartment into a deafening silence. Evelyn did not collapse onto the bed. She did not reach for a tissue. Instead, she walked calmly to the massive mahogany desk in the corner of the room, opened the bottom drawer, and reached past the neat stacks of household files.
Her fingers brushed against cold metal. She pulled out a small, heavy lockbox, entered a four-digit code, and popped the lid.
Inside sat a pristine, untraceable satellite phone. It had been resting in the dark for eight years, waiting for a day she hoped would never come.
She turned it on. The screen glowed with a harsh green light. There was only one number programmed into the device. She pressed call and lifted the heavy plastic to her ear, listening to the static hum of an encrypted connection routing itself halfway across the world and back again.
It rang exactly once.
“I told you he wasn't smart enough to keep you,” a deep, gravelly voice echoed through the speaker. The voice sounded like crushed glass and expensive whiskey.
“You were right,” Evelyn replied, staring out at the glittering Chicago skyline. “He just told me to pack my things. He’s taking Vanessa to the Meridian Gala tonight to announce their relationship.”
A low, dark chuckle vibrated through the phone. It was a sound that had made some of the most dangerous men in North America break out in a cold sweat.
“He chose the Meridian Gala?” the voice asked, sounding genuinely amused. “The man has an absolute flair for his own destruction. Where are you right now?”
“At the penthouse. He gave me until midnight to vacate.”
“Leave the clothes. Leave the jewelry he bought you,” the man ordered smoothly. “Take the private elevator down to the parking garage. There will be a black armored Sentinel waiting in bay four. The driver knows where to take you.”
“And you?” Evelyn asked, her heart finally beginning to beat with a strange, intoxicating rhythm.
May you like
“I’m already in the city, Evelyn,” Gabriel Cross said. “I’ve been waiting for this call for eight years. Go get dressed. We have a party to crash, and a kingdom to reclaim.”
The line went dead. Evelyn set the phone down on the desk. She looked around the lavish penthouse that Dominic believed he owned. He didn't know the truth. He didn't know that the foundation of his entire empire was built on a ghost. And tonight, the ghost was coming to collect.
