Chapter 9 - The Chapel Vestry
The stone path leading from the main mansion to the abandoned chapel was slick with moss and freezing rain. Julian stayed back at the terrace, keeping watch, while I walked alone through the heavy oak doors of the chapel.
The interior smelled of damp stone, old candle wax, and decaying timber. Shafts of gray daylight cut through the cracked stained-glass windows, illuminating floating dust motes that danced in the freezing air. Rows of empty wooden pews stretched toward a raised altar covered in shadows.
I gripped the brass key in my pocket, my boots clicking loudly against the stone floor.
“Dad?” I called out, my voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
There was no answer, only the steady drip of a leak somewhere high up in the roof.
I reached the front of the altar and pushed open a heavy wooden door marked Vestry.
The small room was lit by a single battery-powered desk lamp. Papers were scattered across an old oak table—bank printouts, shipping manifests, and medical records bearing my own name from when I was ten years old.
And sitting in an old leather armchair beside the unlit fireplace was an old man with thinning gray hair, a worn wool sweater, and sunken eyes that looked decades older than they should have been.
He looked up as I entered.
Thomas Hayes didn't look like a criminal mastermind. He looked like a man who had finally run out of tomorrows.
“You’ve grown up, Norah,” he said, his voice raspy, a dry cough catching in his throat. He didn't stand up; he just looked at me with a tired, melancholic smile. “I told Arthur to keep you away from this house. I told him to let you live a normal life.”
“You faked your death,” I said, my voice shaking as I stopped a few feet from the table. “You stole five million dollars. You left me to drown in medical debt while you hid in a boarding school basement playing games with a mafia syndicate.”
“I didn't hide, Norah,” Thomas said softly, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “I built a cage. Do you know what happens when a man like Arthur Costello decides to protect someone? He paints a target on their back for every rival in the Midwest. The only way to keep you safe from his enemies—and from him—was to make sure everyone believed Thomas Hayes was dead and buried in the mud.”
“And Lily?” I demanded, tears hot against my cheeks. “Was she part of the cage, too?”
“Lily is safe,” Thomas said, though his eyes flickered with a sudden, sharp pain. “She’s out of state, living under a name that even Arthur’s enemies can’t trace. But I couldn't finish the transfer. I couldn't clear the accounts until I made sure Arthur understood why I took the money.”
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“Why?” I asked, stepping closer. “Why steal from the most dangerous man in Chicago?”
“Because,” Thomas said, looking up at me with an expression that froze the blood in my veins, “the five million dollars wasn't stolen from Arthur’s syndicate, Norah. It was the price Arthur paid me to look the other way ten years ago when his father ordered the hit on your mother.”
