Chapter 4
Ghost Files in Queens
I didn't go straight to my tiny studio apartment in Astoria.
Instead, I rode the N train to the final stop, walking the remaining blocks through the silent, fog-drenched residential streets.
My apartment was on the third floor of a crumbling brick walk-up.
The lock clicked twice as I turned the key.
I bolted the deadbolt behind me.
I flicked on the single dim lamp by the sagging sofa.
I dropped my bag on the floor and pulled Natalia’s cream envelope from my coat pocket.
The paper was thick, embossed with an illegible European watermark.
I tore the top edge open.
Inside were three photographs and a certified bank document.
The first photograph showed my father’s signature on a debt-restructuring document dated six years ago.
The signature was shaky.
Forced.
The second photograph showed Dominic Pierce standing outside my father’s cardiology clinic, shaking hands with the corrupt chief administrator.
And the third photograph...
My breath stopped.
It was a picture of me leaving the public library three days ago, taken through a high-magnification telephoto lens.
Stapled to the back of the photographs was a financial ledger.
Dominic hadn't just bought my father’s medical debt.
He had manufactured it.
He had poisoned my father’s pharmaceutical supplies to induce the sudden heart failure that doctors had written off as natural causes.
Tears of white-hot fury welled in my eyes.
I didn't cry.
I stopped breathing for three agonizing seconds.
Ten years of grief.
Ten years of working sixty-hour weeks to pay off a debt that was never legitimate.
It was all a engineered trap designed to break our family’s spirit.
And Dominic Pierce had kept me working under his nose in Manhattan as a twisted joke.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table.
An unknown number flashed on the screen.
I slid my thumb across the glass and answered.
“You like the photographs?” Dominic’s smooth, poisonous voice purred through the speaker.
“It’s amazing what money can buy in Queens, isn't it?”
“You’re a monster, Dominic,” I whispered, my voice shaking with rage.
“I’m a businessman, sweetheart,” he replied coldly.
May you like
“And your father was a roadblock. Just like you’re becoming right now. Pack a bag. A car is waiting downstairs to bring you to my office. We need to have a little chat about your future.”
The line went dead with a sharp click.
