Chapter 1 - THE BLOOD ON THE WINE GLASS
The grandfather clock in the study chimed two in the morning.
Dominic stood by the floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelf, a crystal glass of eighteen-year-old scotch held loosely in his right hand. He didn't drink it. He simply watched the golden amber liquid catch the pale moonlight filtering through the heavy drapes.
From downstairs, the quiet hum of the estate settling into the night was broken only by the rhythmic, distant ticking of the house.
He couldn't shake the image of Hannah Reed sitting at that narrow wooden table in the pantry.
The way she had handled the gauze. The surgical precision. The sterile technique—cleaning from the inside out, discarding the pad after a single stroke to prevent cross-contamination, checking capillary refill in her fingernails after wrapping the bandage.
A twenty-six-year-old housekeeper didn't move like that.
A woman who had spent her life scrubbing floors didn't check for tissue perfusion.
There was a light tap at his open study door.
Dominic didn't turn around. "What is it, Walter?"
Walter Bell stepped into the dim light of the room, carrying a silver tray with a single object sitting on it: the glass of red wine that Vanessa had tried to give to Eleanor five hours ago—the very glass Hannah had snatched away right before the confrontation.
"You asked me to secure it, sir," Walter said, his voice measured and grave. "Before the cleaning staff cleared the ballroom."
Dominic set his scotch down on the mahogany desk and walked over to the tray. He looked down at the dark red liquid.
"Did she wash it?" Dominic asked.
"No, sir. Miss Reed placed a paper cover over the rim and set it inside the pantry cabinet before Miss Vanessa confronted her. She never let anyone touch it."
Dominic reached out, taking the stem of the glass between two fingers. He brought it up to the light of the green banker's lamp on his desk.
To the naked eye, it looked like an expensive Barolo. But as Dominic tilted the glass slightly, his sharp, trained gaze caught something subtle—a faint, oily sheen floating on the surface of the wine, so thin it was almost invisible unless lit from a specific angle.
"Call Dr. Mercer," Dominic commanded softly. "Have him bring his toxicology kit to the estate. Tell him if a single word of this leaves this house, I’ll throw him off the Navy Pier."
"Already done, Mr. Moretti," Walter replied calmly. "He is in the driveway now."
Five minutes later, Dr. Samuel Mercer—a man who had been on the Moretti family payroll for twenty years, treating bullet wounds and quiet family emergencies that never made the police blotter—sat at Dominic’s desk. He placed three drops of a clear chemical reagent into a small sample of the red wine taken from the glass.
The liquid instantly turned a murky, unnatural violet.
Dr. Mercer’s breath caught in his throat. He set his pipette down with a sharp clack.
"What is it?" Dominic asked, standing behind the doctor, his voice dropping into a register that made even the seasoned physician shudder.
"Digitalis," Dr. Mercer murmured, staring at the vial in disbelief. "A concentrated liquid extract of foxglove. In a woman of your mother’s age with her heart condition... three sips would have induced a fatal cardiac arrest within two hours. It would have looked entirely natural. A heart failure in her sleep."
The room temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.
Dominic’s face didn't change, but his eyes narrowed into two slits of cold, terrifying steel.
Vanessa hadn't been angry because a maid took a glass out of her hand. Vanessa had been terrified because the maid had intercepted a assassination.
"Who else had access to the wine cellar tonight?" Dominic asked Walter.
"Only the catering manager... and Miss Vanessa, sir. She went down to the private reserve twenty minutes before the toast, claiming she wanted to select a vintage specifically for your mother."
Dominic looked down at his own hands—hands that had controlled the docks of Chicago, broken rival syndicates, and built a billion-dollar legitimate shipping front.
"And Hannah Reed?" Dominic murmured. "How did a girl who has been in this house for twelve days know there was poison in that glass?"
"I don't know, sir," Walter said quietly. "But when I was in the conservatory ten minutes ago, I saw her sitting with your mother. She isn't just taking her pulse, Dominic. Your mother calls her 'Doctor.'"
Dominic turned toward the door, his jaw set like iron. "Stay here with Mercer. Seal that glass in a vault."
Dominic walked down the grand marble staircase, his leather shoes making no sound against the thick Persian rugs. He bypassed the main hallway and moved silently down the east corridor toward the conservatory.
The glass doors of the conservatory were slightly ajar. The scent of damp earth, night-blooming jasmine, and cold Lake Michigan air filled the hallway.
Inside, the room was bathed in pale moonlight.
Eleanor Moretti lay back in her velvet lounge chair, her eyes closed, her breathing slow and rhythmic.
Sitting on a small wooden footstool beside her was Hannah.
She was still wearing Dominic’s heavy charcoal suit jacket over her torn housekeeper’s dress. Her bandaged wrist rested on her knee, but her left hand was gently resting over Eleanor’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of the old woman's lungs.
Hannah wasn't sleeping. Her eyes were open, staring out at the icy waves crashing against the stone seawall below the estate.
There was an incredible, heartbreaking exhaustion in her face—a grief so deep and ancient that Dominic felt a sudden, unexpected tightness in his chest.
He pushed the glass door open.
Hannah didn't jump. She didn't gasp. She simply turned her head slowly, her dark, intelligent eyes meeting his in the shadows.
"She's sleeping," Hannah whispered, her voice low and raspy. "Her heart rate was elevated after the scene in the hall, but her pulse has stabilized. Ninety-two beats per minute. Her blood pressure is returning to baseline."
Dominic stepped into the room, leaning his tall frame against the white iron framework of the glass wall.
"Digitalis," Dominic said flatly.
Hannah’s hand on Eleanor’s chest didn't flinch. But her gaze hardened, the soft vulnerability vanishing behind an impenetrable wall.
"You tested the wine," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Mercer just confirmed it," Dominic said, stepping closer. "A fatal dose. You saved my mother’s life tonight, Hannah."
"I did my job."
"Your job is to polish silver and dust the library," Dominic said, his voice dangerous, quiet, and unyielding. "Your job is not identifying odorless, colorless plant toxins in a dimly lit ballroom from ten feet away."
Hannah stood up slowly, keeping Dominic’s suit jacket wrapped tightly around her shoulders as if it were armor.
"I smelt the bitter almonds in the vintage," she lied smoothly.
"Digitalis doesn't smell like bitter almonds, Miss Reed," Dominic countered immediately, taking another step forward until he was standing less than two feet from her. "Cyanide does. Digitalis has no scent at all. But it causes a subtle change in viscosity. It makes the wine cling to the glass slightly longer when swirled."
Hannah went completely silent. She looked up at him, her chin lifted, refusing to back down despite the terrifying presence of the man who owned the city.
"Who are you?" Dominic asked softly. "Because I ran your background check twelve days ago. Hannah Reed. Born in Peoria. High school diploma. Worked five years as a waitress before applying for domestic service. But a waitress doesn't know how to bandage an arterial bleed. And a waitress doesn't recognize a high-grade cardiac toxin in a split second."
"If you think I'm a threat to your family, Mr. Moretti," Hannah said, her voice steady despite the faint tremor in her bandaged hand, "you can call your men and have me thrown in the lake. But if you want your mother to live through the month... you'll let me keep doing my job."
Dominic stared at her for a long, agonizing moment.
He could have had her dragged to the basement. He could have forced the truth out of her in five minutes—that was how the Moretti family handled anomalies.
But as he looked down into her eyes, he saw no deceit. He saw no greed. He saw a woman standing on the edge of a precipice, carrying a burden so heavy it was crushing her.
"Tomorrow morning," Dominic said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "My fiancée will be leaving this house. And you will move out of the staff quarters and into the guest suite on the second floor."
Hannah frowned. "I am a maid, Mr. Moretti."
May you like
Dominic reached out, his long, calloused fingers gently catching her chin, forcing her to look directly into his dark eyes.
"Not anymore," Dominic murmured. "From tonight on... you are my mother's private physician. Whether you admit it or not."
