Chapter 2 - The Order in the Dark
The mansion did not sleep. Even at midnight, when the high stone walls turned black under the New Jersey clouds, the house functioned like a massive, iron-ribbed clock.
I stood by the small kitchenette at the end of the nursery corridor, holding a glass of tap water that felt too cold against my palms. I hadn't unpacked the bag. I had left it by the closet door, a small monument of resistance that felt more pathetic with every hour that passed.
The hallway was dark, save for the small, recessed floor lamps that threw long, golden triangles across the polished oak. I was about to turn back toward my room when the sound of voices drifted through the ventilation grate near the service stairs—low, gravelly voices that belonged to men who spent their nights standing near the gates with their hands inside their coats.
"The girl," a voice said—it was Marco, Anthony’s chief of security, a man whose teeth were mostly silver from a shotgun blast in Newark ten years ago. "Don Anthony wants two men on her shift. Even when she’s inside the nursery."
"Why?" another voice asked—younger, thinner. "She saved the kid. The boss looked like he was going to buy her a church."
"He doesn't want her protected from the Morettis, you idiot," Marco spat, followed by the dry click of a lighter. "He wants her logged. Every phone call, every note she writes to that sister in the hospital, every time she looks out the window at the north gate. The boss thinks she’s too clean. A girl like that, from a town like Elm, doesn't just happen to be standing by the glass when the kid slips."
"You think she's a plant?"
"I think the boss doesn't care if she’s a angel or a snake," Marco murmured, the sound of his boots moving away down the concrete steps of the service stairwell. "He just likes having them where he can put his foot on them if they hiss."
I stood by the zinc counter, the water glass trembling against my teeth until the ice clinked.
He thinks I'm a spy, I thought.
The realization brought a strange, freezing clarity that took the warmth out of the room. Anthony Pellagrini hadn't moved me into the family wing because he was grateful; he had moved me here because a maid who knew how to swim was a variable he couldn't control from the garage. By giving me the private pavilion for Clara, by buying the clinic and settling the debt that had kept me awake for three winters, he hadn't opened a door for me.
He had simply bought the fence.
I walked back to the nursery, my bare feet making no sound against the wood. Luca was sleeping in a bed shaped like a small wooden boat, his thumb tucked securely between his teeth, his pale skin showing a slight flush from the pool water he had swallowed. His chest rose and fell with a quick, shallow rhythm that made me want to reach down and touch his hair just to see if he was warm.
I didn't touch him.
I looked up at the corner of the ceiling, where a small, green digital light was blinking behind the antique molding. A camera. New. The plaster around the lens was still white and chalky, showing that someone had drilled the hole while I was downstairs changing into dry clothes.
May you like
I walked back to my room, shut the heavy mahogany door, and turned the iron key in the lock until it gave a long, metallic click.
It was the first time in my life I had locked a door from the inside while knowing that the person who held the master key was the one who owned the keyhole.
