Chapter 4 - The Girl in Pale Blue Satin
Elena Delacroix lay crumpled like a discarded doll inside the suffocating confines of the holiday chest.
Her pale blue satin Christmas evening dress was wrinkled, stained, and torn at the delicate shoulder seams.
Her silver high heels were kicked off beside her curled knees, her bare toes bruised from kicking the thick walls.
Tears had carved dark, glistening paths through her pale makeup, revealing the sheer agony of her imprisonment.
Concealed ventilation gaps near the base of the chest had barely provided enough oxygen to keep her conscious.
As the cold ballroom air rushed over her burning skin, Elena lifted her trembling, bruised arms into the light.
"Daddy..." she whispered in a broken, raspy gasp that tore through the dead silence of the ballroom.
Her hazel eyes, wide with primal dread, locked onto the familiar gray eyes of the man kneeling above her.
Salvatore felt an invisible blade pierce straight through the center of his hardened chest.
The terrifying mafia patriarch who ruled Chicago’s underworld felt his knees go weak with pure parental horror.
He leaned deep into the chest, wrapping his massive, warm hands tenderly beneath her trembling shoulders and knees.
"I’m here, Elena, I’ve got you," he choked out, his deep voice cracking with devastating emotion.
Elena clung desperately to the lapels of his tuxedo, her fingers digging into the expensive wool like a drowning survivor.
He lifted her slender frame out of the wooden tomb as if she weighed nothing at all.
Her head fell against his broad shoulder, her entire body shaking in violent, uncontrollable spasms of relief.
Maria, despite the bleeding cuts on her hands, scrambled up from the floor and rushed to support Elena’s bare feet.
The loyal maid gently wrapped her own black uniform jacket around the shivering young woman’s exposed shoulders.
Elena buried her face into the crook of her father’s neck, weeping so hard that her entire chest heaved.
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Guests stared with dropped jaws, their expressions transforming from idle curiosity into utter revulsion toward Victoria.
The wealthy heiress who had posed as a saintly future bride had locked Salvatore’s beloved daughter away to suffocate.
