Chapter 2 - The Contract of the Cradle
Hunter didn't scream. If she had been the woman she was a month ago, she might have dropped to her knees and begged for mercy. But a mother who has already looked into her own child's empty casket has very little fear left for a man with a gun.
Instead of pulling away, she tightened her arm around Leo, using her body to shield him from the weapon.
"Lower your gun," Hunter said, her voice steady, though her chest was heaving. "You'll wake him."
Lorenzo didn't lower the weapon, but his eyes shifted. He looked down at his son’s face. Leo’s eyes were still closed, but his tiny cheeks were flushed with color, and his mouth was working rhythmically, drinking with an intensity no doctor had been able to provoke. A single drop of white milk glistened on the corner of the baby's lip.
The silence in the room became absolute, save for the rhythmic swallow-swallow of the child.
Lorenzo’s hand began to shake—a tremor that had nothing to do with weakness and everything to do with shock. He looked from the baby to the young woman in the torn maid's uniform. He saw the milk staining her shirt, the raw grief in her eyes, and the fierce, protective way she held his heir.
"Who are you?" Lorenzo whispered, the gun slowly dipping until the barrel pointed at the floor.
"Hunter," she said, her voice softening as she looked back down at Leo. "I’m one of the evening cleaners. I heard him crying from the second floor."
"The nurse..." Lorenzo turned his head toward the leather chair. The movement was slow, deliberate, and terrifying. He stepped across the room, grabbed the sleeping nurse by the front of her uniform, and hoisted her out of the chair with one arm.
The woman gasped, her eyes snapping open in terror as she met the furious gaze of her employer. "M-Mr. Rossi! I was just—"
"Get out," Lorenzo said, his voice a low vibration that made the glass chandelier ring. "If I see your face on this property when the sun comes up, Mateo will find a use for those concrete mixers at the docks. Do you understand me?"
The nurse didn't even grab her bag. She scrambled out of the room on her hands and knees, her heels clicking frantically down the marble corridor until the sound vanished entirely.
Lorenzo turned back to Hunter. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his trousers, then walked over to the rocking chair. He was a massive man, broad-shouldered and smelling of expensive tobacco and iron, but as he looked down at his son, he seemed entirely hollowed out.
"He hasn't kept anything down in two weeks," Lorenzo said, his voice rough. "Why is he taking it from you?"
"Because he doesn't want plastic," Hunter said, her thumb gently stroking Leo’s velvet cheek. "He doesn't want formulas made in a lab. He wants what his mother was supposed to give him. He wants to live, Mr. Rossi, but he needs a reason to try."
Lorenzo closed his eyes, a single, sharp breath escaping his nostrils. When he opened them, the cold, calculating mind of the Rossi family patriarch had returned.
"You're not a cleaner anymore, Hunter," he said, stepping back to give her space. "You live on the third floor now. You eat what my chefs eat. You wear what I buy you. Your only job is to keep my son alive."
"I have a life, Mr. Rossi," Hunter said, her chin lifting. "I have an apartment in Queens. I have—"
"You have an ex-boyfriend named Tommy Vance who owes forty thousand dollars to the loan sharks in Astoria," Lorenzo cut her off, his expression unreadable. "And you have a landlord who signed an eviction notice yesterday morning."
May you like
Hunter’s breath caught. "How do you know that?"
"I know everything about everyone who enters this house," Lorenzo said, walking toward the door. "By tomorrow morning, Tommy’s debt will be settled. Your apartment will be cleared, and your things will be here. You belong to the Rossi estate now, Hunter. Don't make me remind you of the price of breach of contract."
