Chapter 3 - Bloodlines and Broken Glass
The master suite felt as though the air had been vacuumed out of it.
No one dared to breathe.
Donna Carmela’s words hung suspended over the gleaming marble tiles, each syllable heavier than lead.
Two years ago, Don Salvatore Romano had died in his sleep in the very bedroom down the hall.
The family doctor at the time had written the cause of death as natural cardiac arrest, an inevitable conclusion for a sixty-eight-year-old patriarch who had survived two heart attacks and thirty years of syndicate wars.
Matteo had accepted that tragedy.
He had buried his father in the family mausoleum on a rainy Tuesday morning, assumed control of the Romano empire, and spent the following twenty-four months eliminating anyone who challenged his succession.
He had never suspected that the poison had been sleeping in his father’s own bed.
Matteo did not move.
He stood frozen beside the marble sink, holding the bottle of Evelyn Vale’s medication in his right hand and his mother’s untouched prescription in his left.
The silence was so heavy that the hum of the central heating through the brass vents sounded like a roaring engine.
“Ma,” Matteo said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet whisper.
“Say that again.”
Donna Carmela’s hands gripped the armrests of her wheelchair so tightly that her knuckles turned paper-white.
“It was the middle of July,” the old woman said, her voice shaking with grief and long-suppressed certainty.
“Two nights before your father closed his eyes for the last time.”
“I woke up at three in the morning to fetch warm water for his cough.”
“There was a woman standing by the medicine sideboard in his study, talking on a burner phone.”
“She wore dark clothes and had blonde hair pulled into a severe knot.”
“When I asked who she was, Alessandra stepped out of the shadows and told me she was Evelyn, a specialist brought in to monitor your father’s pulse.”
Donna Carmela pointed a trembling, frail finger directly at Alessandra’s face.
“The next morning, she was gone.”
“And twenty-four hours later, your father was cold.”
Alessandra’s eyes were wide, dilated with raw panic.
She looked from Donna Carmela to Matteo, searching for a single sliver of doubt in his expression.
She found none.
Only the cold, dead calculating eyes of a mob boss who had just realized he had been sleeping beside his father’s assassin.
“She is senile!” Alessandra shrieked, her voice bouncing shrilly off the marble walls.
“Matteo, listen to yourself!”
“You are believing the rambling hallucinations of a woman with early-stage dementia!”
“My aunt Evelyn has been in a long-term psychiatric facility in Michigan for five years!”
“She couldn't have been in this house!”
“Then why is her prescription dated three weeks ago from a pharmacy in Cicero?” I interrupted quietly.
I couldn't help myself.
The medical training drilled into me refused to stay silent in the face of such obvious lies.
“A long-term psychiatric facility in Michigan cannot fill cardiac compounding scripts in Illinois.”
“The state licensing boards do not permit interstate distribution without hospital registration.”
“This bottle has a Cicero municipal tax stamp on the bottom rim.”
Alessandra spun on me with hysterical fury.
“Shut up!”
She lunged toward me, her arms swinging, her long diamond ring catching the bathroom light like a jagged blade.
She wasn't trying to slap me.
She was diving for the bottle sitting on the marble vanity.
She wanted to smash it.
She wanted the pills to spill into the open drain, dissolving into the running water before anyone could run a laboratory analysis.
I moved on pure instinct.
Before Alessandra’s manicured fingers could reach the counter, I slammed my forearm down across the sink basin, shielding the plastic vials with my body.
Alessandra crashed into me, her sharp elbows digging into my ribs, knocking the wind from my lungs.
Her hand clawed at my neck, tearing the collar of my maid’s uniform and scratching a deep welt across my collarbone.
“Give it to me, you South Side gutter trash!” she screamed into my ear.
A split second later, a massive hand grabbed Alessandra by the nape of her neck and ripped her off me.
It was Silas.
The bodyguard threw her backward with effortless strength, sending her sprawling onto the plush hallway carpet outside the master bathroom.
Her emerald dress tore along the seam, exposing her knee, and her carefully styled hair tumbled in wild disarray across her tear-streaked face.
Matteo walked out of the bathroom.
He moved slowly, deliberately, stopping right over Alessandra where she sat huddled on the carpet.
He didn't touch her.
He didn't reach for the handgun holstered inside his jacket.
He simply looked down at her with a disgust so absolute it seemed to wither the air around them.
“You brought poison into my father’s house,” Matteo said.
It was not a question.
“Matteo, no, please!” Alessandra sobbed, crawling forward on her knees and reaching out to clutch the cuffs of his trousers.
“I love you!”
“I have stood by you for three years!”
“Everything my family did was to ensure your family stayed on top!”
“My father died for your father!”
“Your father died because he was a thieving degenerate who stole from the docks,” Matteo answered coldly, his voice devoid of mercy.
“And you thought you could finish his work by clearing out my bloodline.”
He looked toward Silas without glancing away from the weeping woman at his feet.
“Lock her in the east guest suite.”
“Strip the room of anything with an edge.”
“No phones.”
“No internet.”
“Take her jewelry, her shoes, and her belt.”
“If she so much as touches the door handle, put two guards inside the room with her.”
Silas nodded grimly.
“What about her family, boss?”
“Put a surveillance team on Paul Vale’s brothers.”
“If anyone tries to leave Cook County tonight, take them into custody.”
Silas hauled Alessandra to her feet by her elbows.
She struggled, kicking her bare heels against the floor, spitting curses that no longer sounded like the polished heiress who had presided over charity galas at the Drake Hotel.
“You will burn for this, Matteo!” she screamed, her voice echoing down the cavernous corridor.
“My family has half the city council in our pocket!”
“You think you can rule this city without us?”
“And you, Claire!”
She craned her neck back, glaring at me with bloodshot, psychotic intensity.
“I know where your father lives!”
“I know the hospital where he gets his therapy!”
“I will make sure your entire miserable family is buried in the river!”
The corridor doors slammed shut as Silas dragged her toward the east wing, cutting off the sound of her screaming.
Silence fell over the third floor once more.
My chest was heaving, my heart hammering so violently against my ribcage that I had to brace one hand against the marble vanity to keep my balance.
The adrenaline that had carried me through the dinner and the confrontation was beginning to curdle into cold, paralyzing dread.
Alessandra’s threat wasn't empty.
The Vale family had enforcers all over Bridgeport and the South Side.
My father was sitting in an old recliner right now watching television, completely unprotected.
My brother was studying in his cramped bedroom.
They had no security cameras.
They had no armed bodyguards.
They only had the thin deadbolt on our rented front door.
I looked down at my hands.
They were shaking uncontrollably.
A warm shadow fell over me.
I looked up.
Matteo Romano was standing less than two feet away.
The harsh chandelier light accentuated the sharp, unforgiving lines of his face.
His dark eyes traveled from my torn apron collar down to the red scratches bleeding softly against my throat.
“You’re hurt,” he said quietly.
“It’s just a scratch, Mr. Romano,” I managed to say, my voice cracking slightly.
“I need to make a phone call.”
“To whom?”
“To my father.”
I looked straight into his eyes, fear stripping away any remaining deference.
“Alessandra knows where they live.”
“If her people go there—”
Matteo pulled a heavy, secure satellite phone from his inside pocket and pressed a single button.
He brought it to his ear without breaking eye contact with me.
“Marco,” Matteo commanded.
A pause.
“Take four men and two black Suburbans to 4421 South Paulina Street.”
He recited my family’s address from memory without checking a single note.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Set a perimeter around the Miller residence.”
“If anyone approaches that porch who doesn't belong there, put them in the trunk.”
“Nobody touches the old man, and nobody touches the boy.”
“Do you understand?”
A muffled confirmation came through the speaker.
Matteo ended the call and slipped the phone back into his coat.
He looked at me, his gaze intensely personal, stripping away the uniform, the apron, and the ten months of polite distance between master and servant.
“Your family is safe, Claire.”
May you like
“Now you and I are going to sit down.”
“Because before this night ends, you are going to tell me exactly how a twenty-nine-year-old maid recognized a lethal compounding formulation at thirty paces.”
