Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Elena Rossi
The rain began falling as our yellow cab pulled up in front of the Lincoln Park brownstone.
It was quiet, covered in creeping ivy, and smelled faintly of lavender and old paper when I unlocked the front door.
Ethan ran straight to the couch, pulling a woolen throw blanket around his shoulders while I locked the deadbolt and drew the heavy velvet drapes.
My mother had known Alexander Moretti long before I married him.
Her family, the Rossis, had run the city's port logistics and warehouse shipping manifests for three generations before Alexander’s father took control.
When my father died, my mother made me promise to hide my heritage, terrified that the underworld would devour me as it had devoured her brothers.
I walked down into the dusty basement, moving aside two heavy wooden wine crates in the far corner beneath the stone archway.
Behind the loose mortar lay an iron lockbox that had remained untouched since the day I walked down the aisle in white lace.
Inside rested an encrypted digital hard drive, three certified copies of port leases, and a leather-bound ledger stamped with the Rossi seal.
Alexander thought my mother was just a sickly old woman living on a modest allowance he graciously provided.
He didn't know that every shipping container moving through the Calumet Harbor had to clear a maritime easement registered in her legal name.
For seven years, Alexander had been routing sixty percent of his syndicate's luxury imports through docks that legally belonged to my estate.
I plugged the drive into my old laptop, watching the green status bar fill as the encryption keys unlocked decades of hidden assets.
"Grandma left this for us, didn't she, Mom?" Ethan’s small voice sounded from the top of the basement stairs.
I looked up at my son, seeing my mother's fierce, unbroken spirit shining in his eyes.
May you like
"Yes, sweetheart," I answered softly, closing the laptop with a crisp snap.
"And tomorrow morning, we're going to collect every single debt your father owes."
