Chapter 2 - The Soup and the Strategy
The dining room of the Bellandi mansion felt less like a sanctuary for a family and more like a theater of war where the combatants were three feet tall.
The little girl in the high chair, whose curls were a wild, dark halo around her tear-streaked face, lifted her small bowl of minestrone with both hands and threw it. It didn't hit the floor; it hit the chest of a young maid who was already trembling. The red broth dripped down her white apron like an omen.
"Out," Dante Bellandi said. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. The maid curtsied so fast she nearly tripped over her own soft shoes and vanished through the service door.
Dante looked at me. The gray of his eyes was the color of lake ice before it cracks. "You have three minutes, Miss Ward. If you cannot quiet my daughter, Enzo will show you back to the gate. I do not pay for spectators."
The pressure inside my chest was immense, but it was a familiar kind of weight. For three years, Sebastian Crane had given me small, impossible windows of time to fix things he had broken—an unpolished silver set before a dinner party, an uninvited guest at a charity function, a blemish on his carefully curated world. But Sebastian had always watched me with a smirk, waiting for me to fail so he could use my clumsiness as a weapon. Dante Bellandi was watching me to see if I was made of glass or iron.
I walked past the Don without looking at him.
My cheap flats squeaked slightly on the herringbone wood floor. I didn't try to hide the sound. I didn't try to pull my coat tighter to disguise the width of my hips. I simply knelt beside the high chair, ignoring the smear of tomato broth that transferred onto my trousers from the edge of the tray.
"That looked like good soup," I said to the little girl.
She stopped crying for a fraction of a second, her pink mouth open in surprise. "It has carrots. I hate carrots."
"I hate carrots too," I said, lying without a flicker of hesitation. "They taste like sweet dirt."
The boy at the chessboard looked up, his dark brows lifting. "Carrots are an excellent source of beta-carotene, which is essential for ocular health. Father says a Bellandi does not refuse sustenance based on flavor profile."
"Your father isn't five," I said, not looking at the boy but keeping my eyes fixed on the little girl, who was now clutching her white rabbit so tightly its ears were crushed. "What's her name?"
"Mia," the boy with the blanket said from the corner of the room. He had dragged his feet over to the sideboard, his thumb tucked into his mouth. "She’s the loudest."
"And you are?"
"Nico," he mumbled. "The one with the chess is Leo. He thinks he’s the captain because he was born four minutes before us."
"I am the captain," Leo said, slamming a black rook down onto the board. "Father said so."
"Your father said you were responsible for your own pieces, Leo," Dante’s voice came from the shadows near the door. He hadn't left. He was leaning against the wood paneling, his gloved hand still holding the cracked rosary. "Miss Ward has two minutes remaining."
I didn't look at the clock. I reached out and gently took the white rabbit from Mia’s fist. She didn't scream this time; she was too curious about what this large, wet woman was going to do next. I took the linen towel from my shoulder—the one I had used to dry my face in the car—and wrapped it around the rabbit's ears like a tiny scarf.
"There," I whispered to her. "Now his ears won't get cold from the rain. Do you want to see where I’m going to sleep tonight, Mia? Or do you want to stay here and watch your brothers argue about vegetables?"
Mia looked at her father, then at Leo, and finally at me. She reached out her small, sticky arms. "You're very big," she said.
"I am," I said, lifting her out of the high chair with an ease that came from years of lifting heavy bolt fabric in my grandfather’s upholstery shop before Sebastian took me away from it. "It means I can carry you and the rabbit at the same time without dropping either."
As I turned toward the door with Mia’s head resting against my collarbone, I found Dante Bellandi standing directly in my path. He didn't move to let me pass. He stood so close I could smell the tobacco and cedar on his wool jacket.
"Enzo will show you to the third-floor nursery," he said. His eyes dropped to the broth stain on my knee, then rose back to mine. "You didn't look at me for permission, Miss Ward."
"The children's needs come first," I reminded him, using Enzo’s own words like a shield. "The household rules second. Your permission wasn't on the list."
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A tiny muscle jumped in Dante’s jaw. For a second, I thought he might have me thrown into the rain himself. Then he stepped aside, his coat brushing mine with a dry, rustling sound.
"Three pieces of toast," he told Enzo, who had appeared from the corridor like a ghost. "With honey. No carrots."
