Chapter 2 - The Sound of Frozen Gold
The sliding glass doors of the Boston municipal courthouse hissed open to admit a freezing November wind that whipped across the marble lobby, but the chill inside the room had nothing to do with the weather.
It radiated from the grip of Elias Monroe’s arm around his sister’s waist.
For six long years, Megan—known to the legal world as Lena Whitaker—had believed her older brother was buried beneath six feet of cold earth in a family plot upstate. She had worn black for a year. She had lit candles on his birthday. She had listened to her husband, Graham, offer soft, pious condolences over evening glasses of scotch, telling her that grieving was a natural part of moving on.
Now, Elias was holding her weight against his chest, his heart hammering a frantic, rhythmic beat against her ribs.
He was not dead.
He was a senior partner at Monroe, Vance & Sterling—one of the most ruthless corporate litigation firms on the East Coast. And judging by the razor-thin line of his jaw and the cold fury burning in his dark eyes, he had been watching this exact courtroom for a very long time.
"Don't look at him, Lena," Elias whispered, his voice low and steady, designed only for her ears. "Keep your eyes on me. The ambulance is two minutes out."
Above them on the landing, Graham Whitaker finally found his voice, though it cracked slightly around the edges as he hurried down the stairs, stepping carefully past the scattered legal briefs.
"Elias?" Graham stammered, his blue eyes widening in a mixture of disbelief and sheer, primal terror. "What... what is the meaning of this? You're supposed to be—everyone thought—"
"Dead, Graham?" Elias finished the sentence for him, not turning around as he kept Megan safely shielded against his chest. "Yes, I know. You bought the headstone, didn't you? You even sent flowers. How touching for a brother-in-law who couldn't wait to loot the estate before the ink on the probate forms was dry."
Vivian Cole, the blonde mistress in the designer red coat, recovered her composure faster than Graham. She stepped down another stair, her lips curling into a tight, defensive sneer as she realized the stakes.
"This is ridiculous!" Vivian snapped, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "That crazy woman tripped over her own cheap heels. We were just walking down the stairs, and she threw a tantrum because the judge threw out her alimony request. Now they're bringing in some actor to pretend to be a dead relative? It's a setup!"
Elias slowly turned his head.
He didn't yell. He didn't curse. He simply looked at Vivian the way a surgeon looks at a cancerous tumor before lifting the scalpel.
"Vivian Cole," Elias said softly, his voice cutting through the murmurs of the growing crowd like a glass cutter. "Senior Vice President of Marketing at Whitaker Acquisitions. Salary: two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year. Plus a leased Mercedes, a corporate condo in Back Bay, and a supplemental housing allowance paid out of an undisclosed offshore shell company in the Caymans. Am I leaving anything out? Oh, right—the fact that you’ve been billing your weekend trips to Cabo as 'client acquisition seminars' on Graham’s business tax returns."
Vivian’s face drained of color so fast she looked like a plaster statue. She took a half-step back, her hand flying to her throat.
"You—you don't know what you're talking about," she stammered.
"I know everything," Elias replied calmly. "My firm has been auditing Whitaker Acquisitions since the day Graham transferred our father’s logistics portfolio into his own name using a forged signature. We just needed him to step into a public courtroom and commit a felony in front of twenty witnesses before we dropped the hammer."
Graham grabbed the brass railing, his knuckles turning white. "You're bluffing," he hissed, sweat beading on his forehead despite the drafty courthouse lobby. "Elias, whatever game you're playing—you can't just fabricate corporate—"
Wail.
The wailing shriek of an ambulance siren cut him off, echoing down the stone street outside.
Red and blue emergency lights flashed through the tall arched windows of the courthouse, painting the marble floors in frantic crimson and sapphire.
Megan pressed her face against Elias’s charcoal suit jacket, feeling the strong, steady rhythm of his breathing. The twins gave another sharp, reassuring kick against her palm.
May you like
She wasn't alone anymore.
The ghost had come home. And he had brought an army.
