Chapter 15 - The Last Gasp of Celeste
While Josie rested peacefully in the heavily guarded pediatric recovery wing, dark clouds of desperation were gathering on the southern outskirts of New Orleans.
Inside a secluded motel room near Kenner, Celeste Vanderpool paced frantically across the stained carpet.
Her designer clothes were wrinkled, her platinum hair unwashed and tangled.
Her father had fled the state hours earlier on a private charter to avoid the federal arrest warrant, leaving her with twenty thousand dollars in cash and orders to lay low until the lawyers could negotiate a surrender.
Celeste was not built to lay low.
Her mind, poisoned by narcissistic rage and wounded vanity, could not accept that she had been discarded for a common maid.
"It was that bitch," Celeste hissed aloud, her bloodshot eyes staring into the cracked bathroom mirror.
"She ruined my life.
She took my name, my money, my wedding.
Rafferty wouldn't have looked twice at her if she hadn't played the victim."
Sitting on the edge of the bed was Julian "The Blade" Mercer, a disgraced former enforcer whom Rafferty had expelled from the docks three years ago for selling narcotics to dockworkers' children.
Mercer was a vicious, unprincipled killer who harbored a burning hatred for the Cain family.
"The hospital is locked down like Fort Knox, Celeste," Mercer said, cleaning his fingernails with a stiletto knife.
"Cain has twenty men on the seventh floor.
Nobody gets near the kid."
"I don't care about the kid!" Celeste snapped, turning around, her face twisted with venom.
"I want Fay Delacroix.
She has to leave the hospital eventually.
Rafferty’s driver has to take her to get clothes, or she will go back to that rat-trap apartment in the Bywater to pack her things.
Grab her."
Mercer looked up, his eyes narrowing greedily.
"And what's my payout?
Your old man's accounts are frozen."
Celeste tore a diamond necklace—a gift from her grandmother worth over two hundred thousand dollars—from her neck and hurled it onto the bed.
"Take this.
Take all of it.
Just bring her to the abandoned sugar refinery at Chalmette.
I want her on her knees again.
And this time, Rafferty Cain will watch what happens when someone takes what belongs to me."
At six o'clock that evening, Fay insisted on making a brief trip back to the Bywater apartment.
Josie was sleeping deeply under the care of three private nurses and two armed guards outside her door.
Fay needed to collect Josie’s favorite stuffed rabbit, her medical records from the early clinic visits, and the clothes she had left behind.
Rafferty refused to let her go alone.
"I will send Silvano to pack everything, Fay," Rafferty insisted, standing by the hospital room window.
"You should rest."
"Please, Rafferty," Fay pleaded gently, touching his arm.
"Josie cannot sleep without that rabbit.
It's tucked behind the radiator where nobody else will find it.
And I need to say goodbye to Mrs. Gable.
She watched my child for years when I had nothing to pay her with.
I cannot just vanish without thanking her."
Rafferty looked at her, understanding the loyalty and decency that defined her character.
"Alright," he conceded.
"But you ride in the armored car with Silvano and four men.
You do not leave their sight for a single second.
I will stay here with Josie."
May you like
"I promise," Fay said, kissing his cheek.
Ten minutes later, the black armored SUV departed Tulane Medical Center, heading east toward the Bywater, unaware that a rusted gray van was tailing them through the evening traffic.
