Chapter 6 - A PROMISE WRITTEN IN ASHES
The call came at 12:43 a.m.
I was asleep on Nora’s couch, having insisted that the guest-room mattress felt too soft and the couch was better for my back. In the dream I was standing inside the old Rivergate factory, following my mother’s voice down a hallway without lights. Then my phone rang, and the dream broke apart.
“Ms. Hart?” a man asked. “This is the Chicago Fire Department. We have an incident at your business address. Are you somewhere safe?”
For a moment, I couldn’t understand what he meant.
“An incident?”
“A fire. Crews are on scene. We need to ask whether anyone should be inside the building.”
I sat up so quickly that a sharp ache caught beneath my ribs. I steadied myself and answered his questions. The studio had been empty when we left. No one had permission to stay overnight. The neighboring businesses had nighttime alarms, but I didn’t know whether they had been occupied.
Nora was awake before I finished the call.
“Please tell me that wasn’t the hospital.”
“Worse,” I said, looking at the sketchbook on her table. “My studio.”
She sat beside me without saying anything. That was one of the reasons I loved her. She understood that there were moments when words only made the room smaller.
Adrian arrived twenty minutes later, having heard from Matteo. He found me sitting at the kitchen table with both hands wrapped around a mug of tea I hadn’t drunk.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t apologize for something you haven’t done.”
“I let Victor keep influence over the project. I let him near your life.”
“Then you can help make sure he doesn’t get another chance.”
His eyes met mine. There was something dangerous beneath the surface of them, a violence that had been trained into him long before I met him.
“You’re thinking about going after him,” I said.
Adrian looked away.
I pushed the mug aside. “Look at me.”
He did.
“If you disappear into that world tonight, you are making another decision about my future without asking me. You are telling me your anger matters more than our daughter’s need for a living father.”
His expression tightened. “He may have burned down your business.”
“We don’t know that yet. And even if he did, you don’t get to turn your guilt into a funeral.”
Nora made a very quiet sound in the next room. I suspected she was praying for Adrian to have the sense to listen.
He rubbed a hand down his face. “What do you want me to do?”
“Help me get the insurance records. Help Grant find out what happened. And when I see Dr. Sloan tomorrow, sit beside me and remember that the baby comes first.”
Adrian nodded.
It wasn’t a cinematic moment. No thunder rolled. No enemy was defeated. A dangerous man simply chose to stay, which might have been the harder victory.
In the morning, I saw photos of the studio. The front windows were blackened. Water had soaked the flooring and most of my project files. The fire department had contained the damage before it spread to neighboring apartments, and nobody had been reported injured.
I stared at the image of my drafting table, warped and ash-covered, until Nora gently turned my phone over.
“We’ll rebuild,” she said.
“How?”
“One thing at a time. You still have your brain, your clients, and the faculty member who apparently keeps every email ever sent.”
She had a point.
I called Professor Bennett. She was furious about the fire and immediately offered temporary workspace at the university. My former clients began offering copies of their contracts and designs. A neighborhood bookstore owner volunteered to lend a spare office when I was ready.
The kindness came in small pieces, and I collected every one of them.
My mother used to say that buildings were not saved by one heroic person arriving with a perfect plan. They were saved by neighbors who covered a broken window, by carpenters who showed up with their own tools, and by someone willing to keep the lights on when everyone else had gone home. I had never understood how much of my career was an attempt to keep her voice alive. The fire had destroyed drawings I spent years making, but it had not destroyed the reasons I made them. That mattered more than I knew how to explain.
I wrote the names of everyone who offered to help on the back of an envelope. When I reached the bottom, I turned it over and kept writing. For the first time since the flames, I could imagine opening the studio door again.
Later, Dr. Sloan examined me and reviewed the day’s fetal testing. My daughter’s heartbeat remained reassuring. Her growth concern had not vanished, but neither had it suddenly worsened. We discussed the possibility of delivery before forty weeks if later assessments called for it.
“Your job,” Dr. Sloan said, “is not to solve every family crisis by breakfast. Your job is to tell us if something changes and to give yourself room to rest.”
I laughed weakly. “You have met my family situation.”
“I have,” she said. “And I’m still giving the same medical advice.”
Adrian asked one question about the monitoring schedule, listened to the answer, and wrote it down. I almost wanted to applaud.
In the hallway, he held out a granola bar.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You haven’t eaten since the appointment.”
“Are you ordering me to?”
“No. I’m offering a granola bar.”
I examined the wrapper. “You bought the wrong flavor.”
He sighed. “Of course I did.”
“Chocolate peanut butter. You used to remember.”
“I remember,” he said quietly. “I just thought you might have changed.”
I looked at him then. The man who had known my coffee order, my nightmares, my tendency to fall asleep halfway through old movies. We had lost all the little certainties along with the big ones.
“I still like chocolate peanut butter,” I said.
He smiled sadly. “I’ll remember that too.”
That afternoon, Sofia came to Nora’s apartment carrying a folder she kept pressed against her chest. She looked at Adrian first, then at me.
“I voted for Rivergate’s initial financing,” she admitted. “Victor told me the site had passed every environmental review. I didn’t look deeply enough.”
Adrian’s face hardened. “Why tell us now?”
“Because I signed off on the committee minutes that gave him authority to approve revisions. If the documents were altered afterward, my name is part of the trail.”
“Are you saying you helped him?” I asked.
“Not knowingly. But I helped him get the power he used. I need to own that.”
It would have been easy to hate her. Easier than admitting how often we all trusted the confident person in the room because doing so meant we didn’t have to wrestle with uncertainty ourselves.
“What’s in the folder?” I asked.
“A list of payments authorized through the redevelopment subsidiary. One went to a consulting firm Lila Perez used before she disappeared from public view.”
“Can Grant trace it?”
“She’s already working on it. And I may have found Lila.”
We all looked up.
Sofia took a slow breath. “A lawyer contacted me through a nonprofit that assists employees reporting misconduct. He says Lila is alive and willing to give a statement if she can do it safely.”
My heart thudded. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know yet. She’s frightened. Someone pressured her to withdraw an environmental objection. She refused to falsify the report and left the city after a threat to her family.”
“Then why not go straight to Grant?” Adrian asked.
“She is. But she wants to know whether the Moretti family itself will protect the documents instead of burying them. She asked to speak with me first.”
I understood Lila’s fear. Powerful men had turned my medical appointments into surveillance reports. Why would a consultant trust the family at the center of her nightmare?
“Tell her we’re working with Grant,” I said. “And that she owes us nothing she isn’t comfortable giving.”
Sofia nodded, relief crossing her face.
Adrian stepped closer to his sister. “You’re not going to a meeting alone.”
“I know,” she replied. “I’ve asked Detective Grant to coordinate.”
He stared at her, then gave one small nod. “Good.”
For the first time in weeks, it seemed possible that everything might be resolved without another person being harmed.
That hope lasted until evening.
Sofia had gone to meet the lawyer at a public café under police coordination. She was supposed to call afterward. At six, she sent a short message saying she was leaving the meeting. At six-thirty, her phone went unanswered.
Adrian tried again. Then Matteo. Then Grant.
At seven, Detective Grant called us directly.
“Sofia’s driver says she stepped away to speak to someone outside the café,” Grant said. “We’re reviewing the surrounding cameras now.”
“Someone?” Adrian demanded.
“A woman who appeared to know her. We haven’t identified her yet.”
I felt a cold weight settle in my stomach. “You’re saying she’s missing.”
“We’re treating it as an urgent welfare concern,” Grant replied. “I’ll update you with confirmed information.”
Adrian’s face drained of color.
Half an hour later, a message appeared on his phone.
It came from Sofia’s number.
The attached image showed her silver bracelet lying on concrete beside a painted number.
17.
The message beneath it contained a single instruction:
BRING ELENA TO RIVERGATE BEFORE THE BOARD VOTE, OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR SISTER AGAIN.
Adrian read it once. Then he handed the phone to Detective Grant, who had just arrived.
His voice was low and frighteningly calm.
“No,” he said. “You don’t get Elena.”
May you like
I looked at the number on the concrete and recognized the paint from the freight-tunnel photograph.
“Then we need to find Door Seventeen,” I whispered. “Before Victor decides we aren’t coming.”
