Chapter 3 - The Frozen Tile Beneath the Barrels
“Put me down, Mr. Caruso,” I gasped, panic seizing my throat as I clutched his silk shirt to keep from falling. “Please... the other maids will see... I’m not supposed to be touched by the family.”
“The family?” Salvatore rasped from his wheelchair, his left hand gripping the armrest with new, furious strength. “You are the only person in this cursed mausoleum who treated me like blood.”
Dante held me against his chest with effortless power. The heat radiating from his broad frame soaked through my frayed sweater, thawing the deep, bone-aching chill that had lived inside me for months.
He carried me into the hallway, turning back to the guards.
“Bring my father down in the service elevator to the master suite. Now.”
“Yes, Don Dante!” two soldiers barked, snapping to attention and wheeling Salvatore forward with frantic, reverent speed.
Victoria stood pinned against the wall, her eyes wide with toxic disbelief as she watched the most feared mobster in North America carry an eight-month-pregnant maid down the grand mahogany staircase.
“Dante! Where are you taking that filthy creature?”
Dante halted on the third-floor landing.
He didn't look at his fiancée.
“Where did she sleep last night, Victoria?”
Victoria swallowed hard, her chest heaving beneath the chinchilla wrap.
“She... she had accommodations in the domestic quarters—”
“She slept on the flagstones in the root cellar,” an old voice boomed from the wheelchair behind them. Salvatore pointed his shaking cane toward the basement archway. “Beside the leaking brine barrels. With a burlap sack for a pillow. Victoria locked the iron grate herself at nine o'clock.”
Dante’s gray eyes flared with a lethal, blinding light.
He looked down at my face, noticing for the first time the purple shadows beneath my eyes, the cracked skin of my lips, and the dark bruise on my right wrist where Victoria’s bodyguard had shoved me into the cellar three nights ago.
“Is this true, Nora?” Dante whispered, his voice vibrating with absolute fury.
“My loan-shark debt was fifty thousand dollars, sir,” I choked out, tears finally spilling over my lashes. “Miss Delacroix told me that if I complained, she would call the collection crew in Montreal and have them take my baby the day she was born.”
The silence that descended on the grand staircase was heavier than an iron tomb.
Dante turned his head slowly toward Victoria.
“You threatened an unborn child under my roof?”
“She’s a nobody, Dante!” Victoria screamed, all aristocratic composure evaporating into ugly, venomous hatred. “Her ex-boyfriend was a two-bit car thief! She came here with nothing! Why do you care about a pregnant gutter rat when our wedding is in three weeks?”
Dante took two slow steps down the stairs, carrying me with steady, unbreakable balance.
“Because my father chose her,” Dante said, his voice flat as a guillotine blade.
He looked at his lieutenant, Marco, who had just returned from the courtyard with snow dusted on his shoulders.
“Take Miss Delacroix to the root cellar,” Dante commanded. “Put her on the wet flagstones beside the brine barrels. Strip her of her furs, her jewelry, and her shoes. Lock the iron grate from the outside.”
Victoria shrieked, backing toward the balustrade.
“No! You can’t! My father will destroy your shipping routes! Dante, you touch me and the Five Families will go to war!”
Marco stepped forward, his scarred face expressionless as his heavy gloved hand clamped around Victoria’s wrist. With a single sharp twist, he tore the chinchilla wrap from her shoulders, letting the six-figure fur fall into the dust of the floorboards.
“Downstairs, Miss Delacroix,” Marco muttered, hauling her toward the cellar stairs while her screams echoed through the rafters.
Dante carried me through the double oak doors of the master penthouse suite on the second floor.
A massive fire roared in the limestone hearth.
The air smelled of aged sandalwood, rich leather, and warmth.
He laid me down gently onto the massive king-sized bed, pulling the goose-down duvet over my trembling legs.
He didn't step away.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, his large, scarred hand reaching out, his fingers hovering hesitantly before resting flat against the gentle curve of my pregnant belly.
Beneath his palm, little Lily gave a sudden, firm kick.
Dante froze.
The ruthless Don of New York, a man whose hands had ended twenty lives in Buffalo without flinching, looked down at his own palm with an expression of pure, breathtaking reverence.
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“She kicked,” he whispered.
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