Chapter 1 - The Receipt in the Pocket
The door of the cottage creaked open, letting in a draft of cool evening air.
I sat up on the narrow cot, my vision swimming with heat, my throat feeling as though it were lined with broken glass. I reached out blindly for the small wooden chair beside my bed, ready to call out for Emma, when I saw him standing in the doorway.
Alessandro Moretti.
He filled the small entryway, his broad shoulders casting a long shadow across the worn floorboards. In his arms, wrapped tightly inside his dark, expensive suit jacket, was my three-year-old daughter. Her wet bare feet dangled over his forearm, her damp curls pressed against his crisp white collar.
"Mr. Moretti," I gasped, my voice barely a rasp. Panic cut through my fever like an electric shock. "I... I’m sorry. I was coming back... I just needed thirty minutes—"
"Quiet, Elena," Alessandro said, his tone low and remarkably gentle.
He crossed the small room in three long strides, stepping past the peeling paint and the cheap space heater. He lowered Emma onto the foot of my bed, gently unwrapping his jacket from around her shoulders.
Emma immediately scrambled over to me, burying her wet little face into my waist. "Mama! The boss man say cry okay!"
Alessandro stood over us, his suit jacket now ruined, dark water stains spreading across his white shirt. He looked down at me with an expression I had never seen on a man of his standing—not anger, not annoyance, but an intense, searching concern that made my chest ache.
"She was in the laundry room," Alessandro said quietly. "Trying to scrub an espresso stain off my shirt in cold water so you wouldn't get fired."
Tears sprang to my hot eyes. "I’m so sorry, sir. I’ll pay for the shirt. I’ll pack our things—"
"Elena," he interrupted softly, placing a large, warm hand on the wooden bedframe. "Nobody is packing anything. You have a thirty-nine-degree fever. Why didn't you tell the housekeeper you were ill?"
"Because Mrs. Gable said..." I swallowed hard, trying to clear my throat. "Mrs. Gable said if I missed another day this month, you’d replace us. She said people like me are easy to find."
Alessandro’s dark eyes narrowed slightly, a sudden, dangerous stillness coming over his features. "Mrs. Gable said that?"
Before I could answer, Alessandro reached into the side pocket of his trousers, pulling out a folded piece of paper—a laundry receipt he had picked up off the counter when he lifted Emma from the stool.
He opened it idly, glancing at the printed text.
Then he stopped.
The stillness around him deepened into something icy and terrifying. The faint color in his face vanished, leaving his jaw rigid as stone.
"Mr. Moretti?" I asked, my fevered brain struggling to read his reaction. "Is something wrong with the receipt?"
Alessandro didn't answer immediately. He smoothed the paper out with two long fingers, staring at the small blue ink stamp at the bottom of the slip.
[HARBOR SHORE DRY CLEANERS — SPECIAL ORDER 402] [DELIVERY LOCATION: MORETTI RESIDENCE — GUEST COTTAGE] [SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS: VERIFY SERVING STAFF SCHEDULE DAILY. REPORT ATTENDANCE DIRECTLY TO V. M.]
V. M.
Vittorio Moretti. Alessandro’s uncle. The man who sat on the board of the harbor union and had been quietly pushing for a takeover of the family’s shipping routes for three years.
Alessandro turned the receipt over. On the back, written in precise, blue ballpoint ink, was a note that had never been meant for my eyes:
“The maid’s child is his weakness. She looks like his late sister. Keep the mother sick. Force the child into the main house. Create the opening.”
Alessandro closed his eyes, a single, harsh breath leaving his lungs.
Someone had been poisoning my water in the cottage to keep me bedridden, using Mrs. Gable to manipulate my toddler into entering the main house at a specific time—all to set up a target inside the mansion for Vittorio’s men.
May you like
Alessandro opened his eyes, and the look in them was lethal.
"Elena," he said softly, his voice dropping into a tone that promised bloodshed. "Pack Emma’s blanket. You aren't staying in this cottage tonight."
