Chapter 6 - The Recipe Box
The paper felt suddenly heavy in my hand, burning against my palm like a hot coal.
I stared at the name Clara written in Elena Sterling’s elegant cursive. How was that possible? Elena had died in a tragic car accident two years ago—or at least, that was the official police report released to the press. She had been a brilliant neurochemist before marrying Dante, living a quiet life in Westchester. I had grown up in foster care in Queens, adopted by a struggling couple who died when I was a teenager. Our worlds should never have intersected.
Yet, here was my name, locked away in a billionaire’s forbidden room.
“What are you doing?”
A voice cut through the silence of the hallway like a razor blade.
I spun around, dropping the paper against my thigh. Dante Sterling stood ten feet away, emerging from the shadows near the staircase. His dark suit jacket was unbuttoned, his tie loosened, and his eyes—those terrifying, obsidian eyes—were fixed on the paper in my hand with a cold, instantaneous fury.
“Mr. Sterling,” I breathed, my voice trembling despite my best efforts. “I... I found this stuck in the doorframe. It drifted out. I didn't mean to—”
“Give it to me,” he said. It wasn't a request. It was an order backed by the weight of a thousand armed men.
He crossed the hallway in three massive strides, towering over me. His hand reached out, his fingers brushing mine as he snatched the paper from my grip. His touch was freezing.
He looked down at the recipe page, and for a fleeting second, his stoic, unbreakable mask cracked. A muscle twitched in his jaw. A look of agonizing, raw pain flashed across his face before he slammed it shut behind an iron wall of stoicism.
“You have no business being on this floor after hours, Ms. Hayes,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous growl.
“I was walking back to my room,” I said, holding my ground even though my knees felt like water. “I didn't break into the room, Mr. Sterling. The paper was in the doorframe. It had my name on it. Clara. Why does your late wife’s recipe box have my name inside it?”
Dante froze.
The silence in the hallway stretched so long I could hear the faint hum of the air conditioning unit through the walls.
“You think you know who you are, Clara?” Dante asked quietly, his eyes boring into mine with a strange, dark intensity. “You think a degree in early childhood education and a stack of glowing references is the only reason Margaret hired you out of a gas-station parking lot?”
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My breath caught. “What are you talking about?”
“Margaret didn't pick you at random,” Dante said, folding the paper and sliding it slowly into his breast pocket. “And you aren't here just to babysit my children. Someone is hunting for what’s inside that room, Clara. And they already know you hold the key.”
