Chapter 1 - THE LOCKED DOOR
The nursery went silent in the wrong way.
Not peaceful.
Not safe.
Wrong.
Leo stopped nursing so suddenly that panic seized my throat. His tiny mouth loosened, his body stiffened in my arms, and the monitor beside the crib gave one sharp warning beep that sliced through the dark room.
Lorenzo Rossi’s gun was still half-raised, but his eyes were no longer on me.
They were on his son.
“Leo,” he breathed.
For the first time since I had entered the forbidden nursery, the most feared man in the country did not look like a monster. He looked like a father watching the world vanish beneath his feet.
Then someone whispered my name from the other side of the locked door.
“Mara.”
My blood turned cold.
Only three people in that mansion knew my name. The house manager. The payroll clerk. And the night nurse sleeping beside the crib.
But the nurse was no longer sleeping.
Her eyes were open.
She sat in the chair with terrifying calm, the wineglass still beside her hand, her mouth curved in the faintest smile.
Lorenzo noticed the same thing I did.
His face changed.
The father disappeared.
The boss returned.
“You,” he said.
The nurse, Cecelia Hart, stood slowly, smoothing the front of her pale blue uniform as if she had not just been caught beside a starving child.
“Mr. Rossi,” she said softly. “You should not have come in here.”
The handle rattled from outside. Someone had locked us in.
Lorenzo crossed the room in two steps and tried the door. It did not move. He slammed his fist against it.
“Open this door.”
No answer.
Leo whimpered weakly in my arms. I adjusted him against my chest, covering myself as best I could while fear and shame burned together in my face. This was not how I had imagined death finding me. Not with a baby in my arms and a mafia boss trapped beside me.
Cecelia looked at Leo, then at me.
“You ruined everything,” she said.
My voice barely worked. “He was hungry.”
“He was supposed to be dying.”
The words landed like ice.
Lorenzo turned.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then he lifted the gun fully toward Cecelia.
“What did you say?”
Cecelia did not flinch. That frightened me more than the pistol did.
“He was supposed to fade quietly,” she said. “After all, babies fail. Doctors fail. Formula fails. Grief does the rest.”
Lorenzo’s hand tightened around the weapon. “Who paid you?”
Cecelia smiled.
“Your family did.”
A sound escaped him that was not quite a laugh and not quite a curse. “My family is dead.”
“Not all of them.”
The monitor beeped again.
Leo’s lips were turning pale.
“Something is wrong,” I said.
Lorenzo looked at the screen. “What happened to him?”
Cecelia’s gaze drifted toward the bottle on the changing table. A small amber vial sat beside it, half-hidden beneath a folded cloth.
I moved toward it, still holding Leo.
“Don’t touch that,” Cecelia snapped.
Lorenzo struck her across the face so fast I barely saw his hand move. She fell against the wall but did not cry out.
He grabbed the vial and shoved it into his pocket.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Proof,” he said.
Outside the door, footsteps approached.
Heavy footsteps.
Not one person.
Several.
Cecelia’s smile returned, even with blood at the corner of her mouth.
“You have about two minutes,” she whispered. “Then they will come in, find the maid holding your half-dead son, find you with a gun, and everyone will believe exactly what they are told.”
Lorenzo looked at me.
I saw the calculation in his eyes. I was the perfect scapegoat. A grieving maid. A dead baby of my own. Milk in my body. Access to the halls. Desperate for money. Running from a violent ex-boyfriend with debts.
Someone had chosen me before I ever climbed those stairs.
“They planned this,” I said.
“Yes,” Cecelia replied. “And you walked right into it.”
Leo made a soft choking sound.
My fear broke.
“Stop talking and help me!”
Lorenzo snapped into motion. He came to my side, one hand supporting Leo’s head, the other reaching for the emergency phone on the wall.
No tone.
Dead.
“Security line is cut,” he said.
“They own security tonight,” Cecelia told him.
The footsteps outside stopped.
A key slid into the lock.
Lorenzo looked at me, then at the window.
We were on the second floor.
Too high to jump with a baby.
Too dangerous to stay.
Then he looked at the old service panel near the built-in wardrobe.
“What’s behind that?”
“Laundry chute,” I whispered. “It leads to the linen room.”
His eyes sharpened. “Can it hold him?”
“It can hold blankets.”
“Can it hold you?”
I swallowed. “Maybe.”
The key turned.
Lorenzo grabbed two receiving blankets and wrapped Leo quickly, carefully, with hands that had probably ended lives but trembled when they touched his son.
Then he looked at me.
“You take him.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“You get him out. Keep him breathing. Do not stop for anyone.”
The door began to open.
“What about you?”
Lorenzo stepped between me and the entrance.
“Go.”
The door cracked.
I saw the barrel of a gun appear first.
Then Lorenzo Rossi fired.
May you like
The sound exploded through the nursery.
I clutched Leo to my chest and dove toward the laundry chute as the room erupted behind me.
