Chapter 2 - The Woman They Warned Us AboutThey took us to the east wing safe room.
Not me and Lorenzo.
Me and Leo.
That told me more than any apology could have.
Lorenzo walked beside us, his gun still in his hand, his men surrounding him like a black wall. The mansion had changed in minutes. Lights flashed. Guards ran through corridors. Doors slammed. Radios crackled and failed. Somewhere downstairs, a woman screamed and was immediately silenced.
I held Leo under a clean blanket while a female medic checked his pulse, his breathing, his temperature.
“He’s responding,” she said, surprised.
Lorenzo stood over her. “Responding how?”
“Like a baby who finally ate.”
His face tightened.
That answer hurt him.
I could tell because he looked away.
For weeks, he had probably stood helpless while doctors and nurses told him his son’s body was giving up. He had probably blamed God, grief, genetics, his dead wife’s absence, maybe even himself.
But not the mansion.
Not the people he paid to keep his son alive.
Not the people close enough to touch Leo’s bottles.
The safe room was not a room. It was a private bunker dressed like a library. Dark wood shelves. Leather chairs. Steel door. No windows. Screens on one wall showing every hallway in the estate. Most screens were blank.
Massimo cursed under his breath.
“Eight cameras are looped. Nursery hall, west staircase, staff entrance, medical pantry, and both corridors leading here.”
Lorenzo’s voice dropped. “How long?”
“We’re checking.”
“Check faster.”
A woman entered with a silver medical case. She was older, maybe fifty, with short black hair and a sharp, controlled face. She looked at Leo first, then me.
“I’m Dr. Anika Rowe,” she said. “I’m not part of the regular staff. Mr. Rossi calls me when he does not trust anyone else.”
That should have comforted me.
It didn’t.
Nobody in that mansion felt safe.
Dr. Rowe washed her hands, pulled on gloves, and examined Leo while he slept against me. She moved gently, but her eyes missed nothing. She checked his mouth, his throat, his skin, his pupils.
Then she smelled the edge of the blanket from the nursery.
Her expression changed.
“What was in the vent?” Lorenzo asked.
“Not enough to kill an adult quickly,” she said. “Enough to disorient, frighten, possibly stop a fragile infant from feeding.”
“Name.”
“I’ll know after testing.”
Lorenzo turned to Massimo. “Find out who serviced the nursery ventilation.”
Massimo nodded and left.
Dr. Rowe looked at me. “How long has he fed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen minutes before the door opened. Then again after the gas stopped.”
“And before tonight?”
“I never touched him before tonight.” I swallowed. “I was told never to enter the nursery.”
Dr. Rowe looked at Lorenzo. “Who gave that order?”
He did not answer immediately.
That silence was an answer.
“Renata,” he said finally.
The house manager.
I had seen Renata Bellini only twice since I started at the Rossi estate. Tall, elegant, always dressed in gray. She never raised her voice because she never needed to. Every maid, cook, driver, and guard moved around her like planets around a cold sun.
Dr. Rowe’s mouth tightened.
“She also controls the medical pantry?”
Lorenzo’s eyes went flat. “She controls the household.”
The steel door opened.
Massimo returned with a tablet.
“Boss.”
Lorenzo took the tablet. I watched his face as he read.
Nothing moved except his eyes.
Then he looked at me.
“Your employment file says you were hired through Bellhaven Domestic Agency.”
“I was.”
“Bellhaven closed eighteen months ago.”
My breath caught.
“No. I interviewed with them.”
“Where?”
“A small office near the train station.”
Massimo said, “Temporary lease. Paid in cash. Empty now.”
The room tilted.
I tightened my arms around Leo.
“No,” I whispered. “I needed work. I applied online. A woman called me. She knew I had hospital bills. She said the Rossi estate needed night staff.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened. “Who interviewed you?”
“She called herself Mrs. Lane.”
Massimo showed me a photo on the tablet.
Renata Bellini stared back.
My stomach turned.
“That’s her,” I said.
Lorenzo’s eyes closed for half a second.
When they opened, something inside him had burned down to ash.
“Renata hired you personally under a false name.”
I shook my head. “Why?”
Nobody answered.
But we all knew the answer had something to do with my body, my grief, and Leo’s hunger.
Dr. Rowe asked quietly, “Mr. Rossi, who knew Ms. Hayes recently lost a child?”
“Nobody here should have.”
“My ex knew,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
My throat tightened. I hated saying his name. Hated giving him shape in that room.
“Travis Ward. He’s the reason my daughter died. He pushed me down the stairs.”
Lorenzo’s eyes sharpened.
“He alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Hiding. Running. He owes money to dangerous men.”
Massimo and Lorenzo exchanged a look.
“What?” I asked.
Lorenzo spoke softly. “Dangerous men have names.”
I looked down at Leo. His cheek rested against me, warm now. Alive.
“Travis said he owed people from the Marcone side.”
The room went silent.
Dr. Rowe stopped packing her kit.
Massimo’s hand curled into a fist.
Lorenzo’s face changed in a way that scared me more than his gun had.
Salvatore Marcone.
Even I knew that name.
A rival.
A man people in kitchens whispered about when they thought the walls weren’t listening.
Lorenzo stepped closer. “Did Travis ever mention my son?”
“No.”
“Did he know you had milk?”
Shame hit me so hard I looked away. “He came to my apartment after the funeral. He saw.”
The words tasted like poison.
“He laughed,” I whispered. “He said even my body was stupid enough not to know my baby was dead.”
For the first time, Lorenzo Rossi looked at me without suspicion.
Only rage.
Not at me.
For me.
It vanished quickly, but I saw it.
Massimo’s phone buzzed. He answered, listened, and his expression darkened.
“They found Renata.”
Lorenzo turned. “Where?”
“Chapel corridor.”
“Bring her.”
Massimo hesitated.
“What?” Lorenzo demanded.
“She’s dead.”
The safe room seemed to shrink.
Dr. Rowe whispered, “Dead how?”
Massimo looked at me, then at Leo, then at Lorenzo.
“She had Clara Hayes’s employee badge in her hand.”
My mouth went dry.
Lorenzo slowly turned toward me.
May you like
I stood there with his son asleep against my chest, wearing the uniform Renata had given me, inside the mansion Renata had used to trap us.
And somewhere inside that house, someone had just made sure the dead woman could no longer answer a single question.
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