Chapter 2 - Shadows in the Marble
By evening, the kitchen had been restored to its bank-vault pristine condition, but the atmosphere in the house had irrevocably shifted.
Dominic hadn't fired me. In fact, after the bubble incident, he had simply stood up, looked at me with an inscrutable expression, and said, "Keep her out of the library, Ms. Carter. The rest of the house is yours." Then he had walked out, leaving Leo sitting at the giant dining table—not staring blankly at his plate this time, but occasionally glancing toward the family room where Lily was busy coloring inside the lines of a book Dominic’s own guards had somehow managed to source within an hour.
I stood at the stainless-steel prep counter, chopping carrots with a chef's knife, my mind racing in circles. Men like Dominic Moretti didn't soften. They didn't let chaotic single mothers and their toddlers breach their fortresses out of the goodness of their hearts. There was a calculation behind every breath he took, a chess match playing out across the city of Chicago that I was entirely unequipped to understand.
A soft tap at the kitchen archway made me jump.
It wasn't Dominic. It was Viktor, the head of his security detail—a hulking mountain of a man with a jagged scar running down his left cheek and eyes like chipped flint. He rarely spoke, and when he did, it usually sounded like a death threat.
"Ms. Carter," Viktor said, his voice flat and devoid of warmth as he leaned against the doorframe, keeping one eye on the hallway behind him.
"Viktor," I replied, keeping my knife moving at a steady rhythm to hide the sudden hammering of my pulse. "If this is about the flour on the pantry floor, I already swept it twice."
"It's not about the flour," he said, stepping a fraction closer. The air around him smelled of gun oil, expensive cologne, and rain. "Boss wants dinner served in the study tonight. Not the dining room. The study."
I paused, my knife hovering over a carrot. "The study? I thought nobody was allowed in the east wing."
"Nobody was," Viktor corrected quietly, his gaze sharpening. "Things are changing. The boy laughed today. Do you have any idea what that sounds like to a man who hasn't heard his son make a joyful sound since the funeral?"
"I just cook, Viktor. I don't psychoanalyze your boss."
"Good," Viktor muttered, stepping back into the shadows of the hallway. "Keep it that way. Because out on the streets, people are starting to notice that the Moretti estate isn't acting like a fortress anymore. And when a king starts letting strangers through his gates, his enemies sharpen their knives."
The warning hung in the air long after Viktor’s heavy boots faded down the corridor.
An hour later, I pushed open the heavy oak door of the east wing study, balancing a silver tray laden with roasted chicken, garlic butter potatoes, and a small cup of apple slices for Leo. The room was breathtaking—walls lined with leather-bound first editions, a roaring fireplace casting amber light across Persian rugs, and Dominic sitting behind a massive mahogany desk littered with financial ledgers and architectural blueprints.
Leo sat in a leather armchair by the fire, quietly turning the pages of a picture book while Lily sat cross-legged on the rug beside him, whispering animatedly about a green crayon.
Dominic looked up as I entered, his slate-grey eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my breath hitch. He didn't smile, but the hard, defensive barrier around his expression had shifted just a fraction.
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"Set it on the coffee table, Ms. Carter," he instructed quietly, standing up from his desk and walking over toward the children.
As I placed the tray down, a sudden, violent crash echoed from the front of the massive house, followed immediately by the shattering of glass and the unmistakable, terrifying crack of a silenced gunshot.
