Chapter 1: The White Marble Hall
The crystal chandelier overhead weighed three thousand pounds, or so the senior housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, had told me every morning at five o'clock while we polished its lower tiers with lint-free cloths. On that particular evening, the crystal seemed to hum with a low, vibrating tension that matched the cold marble under my sensible black flats. I stood with my shoulders back, my beige maid uniform crisp, the white collar pinned tight against my throat. Next to me stood Luciano. He didn't flinch when the double doors swung open to echo across the foyer. He merely adjusted his black silk tie, his dark wavy hair catching the recessed lighting, looking every inch the man who owned half the shipping lanes on the eastern seaboard and all the silence that came with them.
Chloe moved across the marble floor like liquid silver. Her halter-neck evening dress caught the light, and her diamond earrings swung with every measured, furious step. She stopped ten feet away, her chest rising beneath the metallic fabric, her wide-eyed expression twisting into something sharp and ugly. The guards flanking the double staircase rested their hands an inch closer to their holsters, though none of them drew. They didn't need to. Luciano’s presence was a physical weight that kept every man in the room pinned to his post.
“Luciano, who is this woman?” Chloe’s voice cracked slightly on the final syllable, ringing off the limestone walls with a desperate edge. She pointed a manicured finger straight at my chest, right where my pocket watch and linen cloth rested.
May you like
Luciano did not raise his voice. He kept his arm hooked around my waist, his fingers pressing firmly against the fabric of my apron, anchoring me to his side with a calm, terrifying finality. He looked down at Chloe with the steady indifference of a magistrate reading a parking citation. “Release her. She is my wife.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the central heating vents seemed to stop their low hiss. I felt the breath leave my lungs in a single, shallow rush, my skin turning cold beneath the coarse cotton of my uniform. Chloe gasped, her mouth dropping open, her painted lips parting as if she had just been struck across the face in a crowded room. Her eyes darted from Luciano’s unyielding gaze down to my trembling hands, searching for a ring, a spark, anything that could make sense of the madness he had just spoken into the empty air of the hall.
