Chapter 2 - The Cottage and the Wolf
The door of the garden cottage didn’t just open; it yielded to a force that had no business existing in a place this quiet.
I was half-unconscious on the narrow cot, wrapped in a blanket that smelled of damp wool and old cedar, when the wooden panels groaned and slammed against the interior wall. The cold damp air rushed in, carrying the clean, sharp scent of rain and wet asphalt.
And then I saw him.
Alessandro Moretti filled the doorway. He wasn't wearing his suit jacket anymore—that was currently wrapped around my daughter like a heavy, charcoal-colored cape that swallowed her small frame entirely. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled back to reveal forearms corded with muscle and pale, jagged scars that told stories of dockside brawls in Brooklyn and Palermo.
He didn't look like a kingpin in that moment. He looked like a man who had just discovered a fire burning in his own nursery and didn't know whether to put it out or let it consume him.
“Mama!” Emma cried out, slipping from his arms the moment he knelt beside the cot.
She tumbled onto the mattress, her wet sneakers leaving dark smudges on the faded quilt, and threw her small arms around my neck. Her hair was damp, smelling of expensive designer laundry detergent and cold rainwater.
“Shh, baby, I’m right here,” I whispered, my voice cracking, a cough tearing violently through my chest before I could suppress it.
Alessandro stepped into the room. His gray eyes swept over the peeling wallpaper, the single electric heater that barely took the edge off the Atlantic chill, the cracked linoleum floor, and the empty soup bowl on the nightstand from yesterday morning.
The silence in the cottage was heavier than the one in the main house. In the mansion, silence was a luxury—a vaulted, marble-paved absence of sound maintained by three hundred servants and high-end acoustic dampening. Here, silence was just poverty with its teeth baring.
“Who approved this?” Alessandro’s voice was barely a murmur, but it carried the lethal vibration of a plucked bass string.
“Mr. Moretti—” I started, struggling to sit up against the lumpy pillow.
“Who put you in this room?” he repeated, his gaze locking onto mine with an intensity that made my feverish skin prickle.
“The employment agency,” I wheezed, pressing a hand to my burning ribs. “They said... they said the cottage came with the position. Night housekeeping. Live-in staff for the west wing.”
“The west wing hasn't used night housekeeping in six years,” Alessandro said slowly, his jaw hardening until the muscle ticked beneath his skin. “The staff quarters in the main house have climate control, private baths, and medical-grade air filtration. This place is a root cellar.”
He didn't wait for my answer. He turned on his heel, pulling a heavy satellite-linked burner phone from his trouser pocket.
“Vince,” he barked into the receiver before the second ring finished.
“Boss?”
“Get a medical team to the garden cottage immediately. Not the estate clinic. Dr. Rossi. And bring heating units. Now.”
“Boss, it’s 3:00 AM—”
“If Dr. Rossi isn’t at the cottage in ten minutes, Vince, you can spend the rest of the week explaining to the harbor master why you’re swimming in cement shoes.”
The line went dead with a sharp click.
Alessandro slipped the phone back into his pocket and turned back to us. He didn't leave. Instead, he pulled a straight-backed wooden chair from the tiny kitchenette corner, dragged it across the linoleum, and sat down beside the cot. His large, calloused hands rested on his knees.
“She tried to wash my shirt,” he said, his voice dropping into a register that was almost gentle.
“She’s three,” I said defensively, pulling the blanket higher over Emma’s shoulders as she began to drift off against my side. “She thinks if things are dirty, they can be fixed with water. She watches me do it every day.”
“She shouldn't have been in the laundry room,” Alessandro said. “The doors have biometric locks. The service corridors are monitored by motion-activated sensors. A child of her size shouldn't even have been able to trigger the latch.”
My breath hitched. The fever in my head suddenly felt secondary to the cold spike of fear that pierced my chest.
“What do you mean?”
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Alessandro didn't answer right away. He reached out, his long fingers hovering for a fraction of a second over the edge of the blanket before he gently tucked it around Emma’s bare feet.
“I mean,” Alessandro said quietly, his eyes rising to meet mine, “someone unlocked that service corridor door from the inside.”
