Chapter 2 - Twenty Minutes AwayThe first thing Leo Rossi heard was his daughter’s silence.
He crossed the shattered foyer without looking at Victoria. His men flooded the mansion behind him, weapons drawn, boots striking marble, voices low and controlled.
“Secure every exit,” Mateo ordered. “No one leaves.”
Victoria stood beside the bar with a glass of champagne frozen halfway to her lips.
“Leo,” she breathed. “You’re supposed to be in Miami.”
Leo did not answer.
His eyes found Beatrice at the kitchen archway.
Blood ran down her cheek. Two fingers on her right hand were swollen and darkening. Her uniform was torn at one knee, and she was shaking so violently she had to grip the wall to remain standing.
“Where?” Leo asked.
Beatrice pointed toward the iron cellar door.
Leo moved.
He reached the deadbolt and pulled.
It did not open.
“Key.”
Victoria finally placed her glass down.
“She’s exaggerating. Lily was having a tantrum, and—”
Leo turned his head.
He did not raise his voice.
“Give me the key.”
Something in his expression erased Victoria’s smile.
“I don’t have it.”
Beatrice stared at her.
“You locked it.”
“I said I don’t have it.”
Leo grabbed the iron handle and pulled until the muscles in his arms tightened beneath his suit. The door remained sealed.
Mateo appeared beside him.
“Stand back.”
Two men brought a steel battering ram from a security vehicle. The first strike shook the kitchen walls. The second bent the hinges. On the third, the iron frame tore from the stone.
The door crashed inward.
Cold air rolled up the cellar stairs.
Leo entered first.
“Lily!”
There was no answer.
Beatrice followed despite Mateo trying to stop her.
At the bottom of the stairs, Lily lay curled beside a wooden wine rack. Her stuffed rabbit was trapped beneath her arm. Her face was pale, her lips faintly blue.
Leo dropped to his knees.
For one terrible second, the most feared man in Chicago looked like nothing more than a father who had arrived too late.
“Lily.”
He touched her cheek with trembling fingers.
Beatrice pushed past him and lowered herself beside the child.
“She needs her inhaler.”
“Where is it?”
“Her bedroom.”
Mateo was already speaking into his radio.
“Medical team inside now. Bring the emergency asthma kit.”
Beatrice tilted Lily’s chin and listened for breath.
A faint wheeze escaped the little girl.
“She’s breathing.”
Leo closed his eyes for half a second.
Then Lily coughed.
Her entire body jerked as she fought for air.
The estate physician arrived with an oxygen mask and rescue medication. Leo lifted Lily into his arms and carried her upstairs while the doctor worked around him.
Beatrice followed until pain shot through her crushed fingers.
She stumbled.
Mateo caught her elbow.
“You need treatment too.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“She can’t wake up alone.”
Mateo studied her face, then looked toward Leo disappearing at the top of the staircase.
“I don’t think he’ll let her.”
They placed Lily in Leo’s bedroom because it had the largest sitting area and enough space for medical equipment. The physician administered medication while Leo remained beside the bed.
Beatrice stood near the doorway.
She did not know where else to go.
Victoria’s voice rose from downstairs.
“This is insane! She attacked me!”
Leo looked at Mateo.
“Bring her.”
Two guards escorted Victoria into the room.
Her confidence had returned. She had repaired her lipstick and smoothed her platinum hair. A red mark had appeared on her wrist where one of the guards had restrained her.
She displayed it like proof of mistreatment.
“Leo, thank God. Your maid has lost her mind.”
Beatrice stared at her.
Victoria continued before anyone could interrupt.
“She broke into your office. She threatened me. She took Lily downstairs and locked her in that cellar. When I tried to stop her, she threw herself against the door and injured her own hand.”
The lie was so complete that Beatrice almost admired it.
Almost.
Leo remained seated beside Lily.
“Why would she do that?”
“She’s obsessed with your daughter. She thinks Lily belongs to her.”
Victoria’s voice softened.
“She hates me because I’m going to become Lily’s mother. I’ve tried to be patient, but Beatrice has become unstable. Look at her. She broke down your office door and used your emergency line. That isn’t normal.”
Beatrice’s face burned.
Every insult she had ever endured seemed to gather behind Victoria’s words.
Unstable.
Obsessed.
Too emotional to be trusted.
Too large to be seen as gentle.
Too poor to be believed over a woman wearing diamonds.
Victoria stepped closer to Leo.
“She staged this so you would turn against me.”
Leo looked toward Beatrice.
His gaze was unreadable.
“Did you take Lily to the cellar?”
“No.”
“Did you strike Victoria?”
“No.”
“Did you break into my office?”
“Yes.”
Victoria smiled triumphantly.
“Did you use the emergency phone without permission?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know what might happen to someone who used it improperly?”
Beatrice swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Beatrice looked at Lily’s small body beneath the blankets.
“Because she was dying.”
Silence filled the room.
Victoria rolled her eyes.
“She was not dying.”
The child moved.
It was barely noticeable.
One small hand emerged from the blanket and searched across the mattress.
Beatrice stepped forward without thinking.
Lily’s fingers found hers.
The little girl opened her eyes.
“Bee,” she whispered.
Beatrice’s breath caught.
“I’m here.”
Lily turned her face toward her father.
“She saved me.”
Leo’s gaze shifted slowly to Victoria.
The physician checked Lily’s lungs and adjusted the oxygen.
“She needs quiet,” he said. “The attack was severe. Another ten minutes in that cellar could have resulted in respiratory failure.”
Leo stood.
He approached Victoria with frightening calm.
She backed away.
“Leo, she’s confused. She was scared.”
“You denied her food.”
“No.”
“You destroyed her sketchbook.”
“I was correcting her behavior.”
“You told her I wished she had died with her mother.”
Victoria’s face changed.
Beatrice realized Lily must have heard more than anyone believed.
“Children misunderstand things,” Victoria said.
Leo stopped inches from her.
“My daughter does not misunderstand hatred.”
Victoria lifted her chin.
“You’re going to trust a maid over your future wife?”
Leo glanced toward Beatrice.
He saw her swollen fingers, the cut across her cheek, the shoulder she held stiffly from breaking down his office door.
Then he looked back at Victoria.
“I am going to trust the woman who risked her life to save my child over the woman who locked her in a dark room.”
Victoria’s composure cracked.
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Leo looked at Mateo.
“Take her to the east guest suite. Lock the windows. Place two men outside the door.”
Victoria laughed sharply.
“You can’t imprison me.”
“You imprisoned a six-year-old.”
“My father will destroy you.”
Leo leaned closer.
“Your father should begin worrying about whether he can save himself.”
The guards escorted Victoria away as she screamed threats through the corridor.
Leo waited until her voice disappeared.
“Mateo.”
“Yes?”
“Pull every camera recording from the last forty-eight hours.”
Mateo left with two security specialists.
Beatrice remained beside Lily until the child’s breathing steadied. Only then did Leo notice Beatrice’s hand again.
“Sit down.”
“I should clean the kitchen.”
Leo stared at her.
“The kitchen has an iron door lying across the floor.”
“I can still—”
“Beatrice.”
She sat.
The physician examined her fingers. None were broken, but two were badly bruised. He cleaned the cut on her cheek and placed a narrow bandage over it.
Leo watched every movement.
“I told you to keep an eye on Lily,” he said.
Beatrice lowered her gaze.
“I’m sorry I failed.”
His expression hardened.
“You did not fail.”
“I should have stopped Victoria sooner.”
“You were threatened.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Beatrice looked up.
No one had ever said those words to her with such certainty.
Leo lowered his voice.
“You broke through an oak door reinforced with steel.”
“It took three tries.”
For the first time that night, something almost human touched his face.
Not a smile.
But close.
“You called the one number my enemies would kill to possess.”
“I thought you were in Miami.”
“I changed the meeting location this morning. We were using a private airfield outside the city for security.”
“You came back in twenty minutes.”
“I was already coming back.”
“Why?”
Leo looked at Lily.
“I had received a message saying there was a problem at home.”
Beatrice’s skin went cold.
“What message?”
Before he could answer, Mateo returned.
The right-hand man’s face was grim.
“There are no recordings.”
Leo stood.
“What do you mean?”
“The interior system was disabled at eleven twenty-three this morning. Every camera inside the mansion went dark three minutes after you left.”
“Victoria does not know the security codes.”
“No.”
Mateo held up a small tablet.
“And the shutdown did not come from inside the house.”
“Where did it come from?”
Mateo looked toward the window, where the lights of Chicago glowed beyond the estate walls.
“Someone accessed the system through a Rossi executive account.”
Leo’s voice became quiet.
“Whose?”
“We’re tracing it.”
A guard appeared in the doorway.
“Sir, we searched Miss Kensington’s room.”
“And?”
“We found her phone, but the message history was erased.”
“Recover it.”
“We’re trying.”
The guard hesitated.
“There was one other thing.”
He handed Leo a folded sheet of paper.
It was a printed photograph of Beatrice leaving a neighborhood grocery store two weeks earlier. A second image showed her walking beside Lily in the estate gardens.
Across the bottom, someone had written a single sentence in black ink.
THE MAID WILL MAKE HIM WEAK.
Leo stared at the photographs.
Beatrice felt the room tilt.
Someone had been watching her.
Someone inside Leo Rossi’s world had known exactly what Victoria intended to do.
And whoever had sent the warning had allowed it to happen.
Leo folded the photograph once.
“Double the guards.”
Mateo nodded.
“No one enters or leaves without my permission,” Leo continued. “Not family. Not friends. Not police.”
His eyes moved to Beatrice.
“And from this moment forward, she does not leave Lily’s side.”
Beatrice’s heart pounded.
Mateo glanced at the threatening message.
“Because you trust her?”
Leo looked toward the dark hallway where Victoria had disappeared.
May you like
“No,” he said.
“Because someone is already afraid that I do.”
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