Chapter 3 - The Gilded Cage
The Castellano estate in Newport looked less like a home and more like an armed compound disguised as a nineteenth-century French chateau. Iron gates ten feet high swung open automatically as Dante’s black town car rolled up the winding gravel drive, flanked by stone lions covered in creeping ivy.
The transition from a studio apartment above a laundromat to a fifty-room mansion was enough to induce vertigo. The foyer boasted a sweeping marble staircase, soaring ceilings draped in crystal chandeliers, and oil paintings of men who had ruled Rhode Island with iron fists for generations.
Yet, for all its grandeur, the house felt hollow.
"Your rooms are on the second floor, connected to the master suite," Dante said as he walked beside her up the grand staircase, his footsteps muffled by thick Persian rugs. "There's a private sitting room, an adjoining nursery that hasn't been touched in three years, and a balcony overlooking the cliffs. If you need anything—books, clothes, medical supplies—tell Mrs. Gable, the housekeeper. She answers only to you and me."
Nora stopped at the double doors of the master suite, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. She looked down at the heavy platinum ring on her finger. It felt like an anchor dragging her into deep, dark water.
"Whose nursery was it?" she asked quietly, the question slipping out before she could stop it.
Dante’s back went rigid. The hallway seemed to drop ten degrees in temperature. For a long moment, he didn't turn around.
"Sean’s sister," Dante said finally, his voice flat, devoid of any inflection. "She lived here briefly before she... passed away. The room has been empty since."
Nora felt a chill run down her spine. Sean had never mentioned a sister. But in Dante’s world, secrets were currency, and everybody kept a vault full of them.
May you like
That night, lying in the enormous mahogany bed that dominated the master suite while Dante slept in the adjoining study with the door cracked open, Nora stared at the vaulted ceiling. She had traded the fear of starvation for the terror of living inside a lion's den. Yet, as she placed a hand over her slightly rounding stomach, she realized something strange: she wasn't shaking anymore.
The storm outside lashed against the reinforced glass of the Newport cliffs, but inside, surrounded by stone and steel and a man who terrified everyone in New England, she was entirely safe. And that terrified her most of all.
