Chapter 4 - The Ghost From the Past
Memories that Ronan had buried twelve years ago under layers of concrete and gunfire erupted into the cold room with ferocious clarity.
Before he had inherited his father's syndicate, before Catherine, before the war that cemented his throne, Ronan had been a young captain tasked with running logistics in the North Side districts. And back then, Clara Hastings had been the daughter of Thomas Hastings—an honest, incorruptible union boss who had refused to bow to the Vale family’s extortion. Thomas had been a man of steel and honor, a man Ronan had respected immensely.
When a rival family—the ruthless Moretti crew—had placed a hit on Thomas Hastings to seize control of the dockworkers' union, Ronan had gone against his own father’s orders to smuggle Thomas and his nineteen-year-old daughter Clara out of the city. He had hidden them in a safehouse for three weeks, bringing them supplies, guarding their door through the night. In those quiet, terrifying weeks, Clara had looked at Ronan not as a mobster, but as a protector. There had been an unspoken connection between them, a tender spark born in the shadows of violence.
Then, tragedy had struck. A leak in the organization revealed the safehouse. A bomb had detonated while Ronan was en route with supplies. By the time he arrived, the building was an inferno. Thomas Hastings had died in the blast, and Ronan had pulled Clara’s scorched coat from the rubble, believing she had perished alongside her father. Overcome with guilt and rage, Ronan had waged a six-month war that completely eradicated the Moretti family from Chicago, avenging the Hastings name in blood.
He had believed she was dead for over a decade.
"You're alive," Ronan breathed, his hand trembling as he touched Clara’s burning cheek. "God in heaven, Clara... you survived."
"You... you never came back," Clara whispered through her delirium, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes before she drifted back toward unconsciousness. "They told me... you were the one who set the fire..."
Ronan’s jaw set into stone. They told her I set the fire. Someone had intentionally separated them, fed her lies, and forced her into hiding in the slums of the city while he built an empire believing she was in a grave.
"Mr. Vale!" Dr. Mercer burst into the room, flanked by two private paramedics carrying a stretcher and an emergency oxygen rig. "We're here! Move aside, please!"
"Take her," Ronan ordered, his voice trembling with an emotion that shocked Marco, who stood watching in the doorway. "Do not spare a single resource, Mercer. If she dies, your career dies with her. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Mr. Vale! Clear the hallway!" Mercer barked, immediately placing an oxygen mask over Clara’s face and securing her onto the stretcher.
Mia stood back, clutching her little backpack, crying quietly as the strangers wheeled her mother away. She looked up at Ronan, terrified. "Is my mommy going to die?"
Ronan knelt down, pulling the little girl into a fierce, protective embrace. "No, Mia. Your mother is going to live. I swear it on my life."
He picked Mia up in his arms, turning to Marco as they descended the narrow stairs. "Marco."
"Boss?"
"Have our forensic team go through that apartment. Find out who owned the building, who cut off the heat, and who has been collecting rent from Clara Hastings for the last eight years. And find out who Mia's father was."
"Right away, Boss."
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As the ambulance sped through the slushy streets of Chicago with its sirens wailing, Ronan sat in the back of the SUV with Mia in his lap and Eli holding her hand. A dangerous, cold fury was settling deep into his bones. Someone had lied to Clara. Someone had left the daughter of Thomas Hastings to freeze in a forgotten tenement.
And Ronan Vale was about to make them pay for every single tear she had shed.
