Chapter 4 - The Ghost from the Past
The rain was coming down in sheets now, turning the Seattle sidewalks into rushing streams of dirty water.
My bare feet were completely numb. I couldn't feel the gravel, the broken glass, or the sharp edges of the concrete anymore. There was only a dull, throbbing ache radiating from my left ankle up into my hip with every step. My lungs burned with every breath of the freezing night air, and the shredded silk of my wedding dress clung to my shivering legs like a wet shroud.
I had been walking—and occasionally running when my panic spiked—for over forty-five minutes.
My original plan, if it could even be called a plan, had been to find a public payphone or a 24-hour diner where I could borrow a phone, call a cab, and get to the Greyhound bus station. But as I passed shuttered storefronts and dark, rain-swept office buildings, reality set in.
I had no cash. I had no credit cards. My purse, along with my phone, diamond earrings, and ID, was sitting neatly on the vanity in the bridal suite three miles back.
I was a runaway bride in a butchered designer dress, wandering through the industrial district of Seattle in the middle of a November gale. I looked like a ghost, or a mental patient who had escaped from an institution.
Shivering violently, my teeth chattering so hard my jaw ached, I ducked into the recessed entryway of a closed maritime supply warehouse to catch my breath out of the driving wind.
I slid down the damp brick wall until I hit the concrete, pulling my knees up to my chest. The silk of the dress was soaked through, sticking to my skin like ice.
Think, Claire. Think.
If I went to the police, what would happen? Martin Ashford had judges and city councilmen in his back pocket. Within two hours, my father would be notified that his runaway daughter was sitting in a precinct waiting room, and a pair of Ashford security guards would arrive to cart me back.
If I stayed here, I’d likely succumb to hypothermia before dawn.
A wave of bitter, burning grief rose in my chest. My whole life had been a carefully scripted cage. Every school I attended, every friend I made, every dress I wore—it was all chosen to maximize the Ashford family’s social leverage. And when the house of cards finally collapsed under the weight of my father’s gambling debts and illegal cargo deals, they hadn't hesitated to hand me over to a dangerous mafia boss to settle accounts like I was an old shipping container.
“You walk downstairs and marry Luca Vescari because this family has invested twenty-six years in you...”
My father’s words echoed in my mind, cold and transactional.
An investment. That was all I was. A ledger entry.
A faint sound cut through the roar of the wind.
Click. Click. Click.
Footsteps.
Slow, measured, and deliberate.
My breath caught in my throat. I pressed myself deeper into the shadows of the doorway, wrapping my arms tightly around my knees. Through the driving rain, a pair of headlights swept across the wet street, illuminating a black, unmarked sedan that had slowed down fifty feet away.
The car didn't stop. It didn't flash its high beams. It just crept along at walking pace, maintaining a precise, unblinking distance.
Luca’s men.
They weren't capturing me yet. They were watching me bleed out slowly, waiting to see what I would do.
Panic surged through my veins, overriding the cold and the exhaustion. I couldn't stay here. If I stayed here, I would walk right back into their hands out of sheer weakness.
I needed help. Real help. Someone outside the high-society echo chamber of my parents' world.
My mind raced through names, discarding them one by one. College friends who would panic and call my mother the second I mentioned the mafia. Relatives who would lecture me about family honor.
Then, one name surfaced. A name I hadn't spoken out loud in four years.
Elena Vance.
Elena had been my roommate during my brief, chaotic semester at the University of Washington before my father pulled me out to "focus on family responsibilities." Elena didn't come from money. She lived in a cramped, drafty rental house near the shipyards in Ballard, worked two jobs, and had once threatened to break a guy’s nose with a heavy linguistics textbook when he wouldn't leave her alone at a campus bar.
She was fierce, loyal, and lived entirely off the grid of high-society Seattle.
It was a four-mile walk to Ballard. In my condition, it was an impossible journey. But it was the only option I had left.
May you like
Clenching my jaw, I pushed myself up off the cold concrete, ignored the blinding pain in my ankle, and stepped back out into the rain.
Behind me, half a block away, the black sedan matched my pace and rolled forward into the dark.
