Chapter 3 - The Wedding Dress and the Wet Towel
The morning sun filtered through the leaded glass of the grand foyer, casting long, distorted shadows across the checkered marble floor. Camille Ashwood stood before a three-way gilded mirror, her arms resting lightly against the cascading layers of Italian silk and Chantilly lace that made up her custom bridal gown. The dress had cost forty thousand dollars, paid for out of the Rinaldi corporate accounts, yet her reflection showed a face twisted with bitter impatience.
"It’s dragging on the floor, Carla," Camille snapped, her voice sharp as broken glass as she glared at the head housekeeper kneeling at her hemline. "Watch what you’re doing. If you stain this lace with your cheap labor hands, you won't just lose your job; you’ll lose your room in the staff quarters."
Carla kept her head bowed, her hands steady as she pinned the hem. "I am sorry, Miss Ashwood. I will ensure it is immaculate before the final fitting."
"You better," Camille muttered, turning sharply to see Dean Foster walking down the grand staircase. Dean was wearing an immaculate charcoal suit, his blond hair combed back, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. He caught Camille's eye and strolled into the foyer, dismissing Carla with a casual flick of his wrist. "Leave us."
Carla gathered her sewing basket, bowed slightly, and retreated toward the service hallway, though she did not miss the way Dean casually reached out to brush his fingers against Camille's bare shoulder—a touch far too familiar for an engaged boss's future wife and his supposed best friend.
"You're playing with fire, Dean," Camille whispered fiercely, keeping her voice low as she glanced toward the library doors down the hall. "What if he suspects something? He’s been awfully quiet lately. Ever since that brat of a maid started bringing him those stupid basins of water, he sits by the window for hours just staring into space."
Dean let out a low chuckle, pulling a silver cigar case from his pocket. "Let him stare. The doctor’s dosage is calibrated to keep his nervous system suppressed for another month—right through the wedding and the corporate restructuring vote. Once we control sixty-five percent of the voting shares, Massimo can sit in that chair until he rots. We’ll institutionalize him for 'post-traumatic mental decline.' No one will bat an eye."
"And the kid?" Camille asked, her eyes narrowing. "That little girl of Carla's gives me the creeps. She watches everything with those big, blank eyes. I found her standing outside our private suite yesterday afternoon."
"She’s three, Camille," Dean scoffed, lighting his cigar despite the no-smoking signs in the foyer. "She doesn't know a corporate merger from a box of cereal. If she gets in the way after the wedding, we’ll let Ranata handle her. Now, keep your voice down. Massimo’s door is only twenty feet away."
What they didn't know was that Massimo was not in the library.
Using a pair of custom carbon-fiber forearm crutches hidden behind the heavy velvet drapes of the east gallery—crutches he had been secretly testing during the dead of night when the estate slept—Massimo had quietly wheeled himself out through the terrace doors earlier that morning to test his strength in the crisp autumn air. He had heard every word through the open transom window above the library door.
Every word. Every betrayal. Every calculation of his murder.
May you like
As Dean and Camille walked off toward the solarium, Massimo pulled himself up from his wheelchair on the secluded stone patio behind the rose garden, his teeth clenched so hard a metallic taste filled his mouth. His legs shook violently, muscles screaming after six months of chemical atrophy, but he took one step—then a second.
"Not yet," Massimo whispered to the empty air, his gray eyes burning with cold fury. "Let them think the trap has already snapped shut."
