Chapter 13 - Standing Orders
After Lily was breathing again, after the private doctor came and gave her a proper treatment, after she fell asleep in Leo’s bed with her small hand wrapped around his finger, the mansion became quieter than Beatrice had ever heard it.
No one asked where Victoria had been taken. No one spoke her name.
Beatrice sat alone in her tiny room off the kitchen, wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt and loose pants from her own suitcase.
Her uniform lay in the trash, cut away where blood had stiffened the collar.
She had cleaned the wound on her cheek. A butterfly bandage held the split skin together. Her fingers were taped. Her shoulder throbbed from breaking Leo’s door.
She should have felt brave. Instead, she felt empty.
Someone knocked.
“Miss Miller?” a guard said through the door. “Mr. Rossi requests you in his study.”
Miss Miller. No one had ever called her that in this house.
Beatrice stood slowly. Her legs trembled all the way down the hall.
The study door hung ruined from one hinge. Splintered wood littered the rug. Beatrice’s face burned when she saw the damage.
Leo sat behind his desk, sleeves rolled to his forearms, tie gone, hair damp from rain. A glass of untouched bourbon sat before him.
He looked exhausted in a way that made him seem almost human.
“Sit,” he said.
Beatrice remained standing.
“Mr. Rossi, I’m sorry about the door. And the drawer. And the phone.” She swallowed. “I know I had no right. I know what people say happens when someone touches that line. If you want me gone, I understand. I only ask that you hire someone kind for Lily.”
Leo stared at her. Then he rose.
Beatrice fought the urge to step back.
He walked around the desk, stopped in front of her, and looked at the bandage on her cheek.
“Victoria told Lily I wished she had died with her mother.”
Beatrice’s throat tightened.
Leo’s jaw flexed. “She told my daughter she was unwanted in her own home.”
Beatrice nodded once.
“She hit you.”
“Yes.”
“She crushed your hand in the cellar door.”
“I tried to stop it closing.”
“You broke through a reinforced oak door with your shoulder.”
Beatrice looked down, embarrassed despite everything.
“I used my weight,” she said softly. “I suppose for once it was useful.”
Leo’s hand came down on the desk so hard the bourbon jumped in its glass. Beatrice flinched.
“Do not speak about yourself that way in my house.”
She looked up. His anger was not aimed at her.
May you like
That startled her more than if it had been.
“You used your body to save my child,” Leo said. “You used your strength when every coward in this mansion followed rules. You used your voice when silence would have kept you safe. There is nothing shameful about any inch of you.”
