Chapter 1 - THE MEN SEARCHING THE HOUSE
Table of Contents 5
For several seconds, I forgot about the footsteps upstairs.
“One hundred seven nights?”
Raphael’s face was only inches from mine in the darkness beneath the servants’ staircase. His breath still carried whiskey, but whatever softness had been in his eyes moments earlier had disappeared beneath something sharper.
Awareness.
Fear.
Not for himself.
For me.
“Forget I said it.”
“That’s not how numbers work.”
Another set of footsteps crossed the marble hallway.
Raphael’s hand closed around my wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but urgently enough to stop me from moving toward the door.
“Don’t go out there.”
“This is my workplace.”
“Not tonight.”
I pulled my wrist free.
“Then tell me who I’m hiding you from.”
He closed his eyes.
That alone frightened me.
Raphael Orsini did not hesitate.
People hesitated around him.
He never did.
Finally, he whispered, “My uncle.”
I stared at him.
“Matteo?”
Everyone in the mansion knew Matteo Orsini.
Raphael’s father’s younger brother had managed the family’s businesses long before Raphael inherited control. He was polished, charming, always dressed like he had somewhere more important to be. He remembered every employee’s birthday and somehow made kindness feel like surveillance.
“Yes.”
“Why would your uncle be searching for you?”
Raphael looked toward the thin line of light beneath the hidden door.
“Because I found something tonight.”
“What?”
He did not answer.
The footsteps stopped directly outside.
A man’s voice carried through the old wood.
“Check every staff room.”
My blood went cold.
That wasn’t Matteo.
It was Carlo, head of mansion security.
Raphael noticed my reaction.
“He works for my uncle now.”
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
My stomach tightened.
I thought about my brother.
Micah was fourteen and receiving treatment for a congenital immune disorder through a specialty program I could only afford because Raphael paid his employees extremely well.
If I lost this job, my brother’s medication schedule would collapse within weeks.
I had built my entire life around preventing exactly that.
And now I was hiding the most powerful man in the house from the people supposedly protecting him.
A door slammed nearby.
Then another.
Raphael leaned toward me.
“If they find me here, tell them I forced you.”
“No.”
His expression changed.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly. You’re trying to make yourself dangerous enough that they’ll leave me out of whatever this is.”
“That might work.”
“It won’t.”
I folded my arms.
“You’re drunk, injured, apparently being hunted inside your own home, and you still think you get to make every decision alone.”
A faint, humorless smile appeared.
“That habit has kept me alive.”
“Maybe it’s also why you’re hiding under stairs.”
That silenced him.
The search moved closer.
Then someone knocked on the unused kitchen door.
“Clara?”
My heart stopped.
Carlo knew I studied there at night.
Raphael’s eyes sharpened.
“Don’t answer.”
Another knock.
“Clara, open the door.”
I looked at Raphael.
“What exactly did you find?”
His jaw tightened.
“A ledger.”
“What kind?”
“The kind people kill over.”
Of course.
I almost laughed from stress.
“Where is it?”
“Not here.”
“Does Matteo think you have it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
Raphael looked directly at me.
“Yes.”
Fantastic.
Carlo knocked again.
“I know you’re awake.”
I whispered, “If I don’t answer, he’ll break in.”
Raphael looked toward the hidden door.
Then back at me.
“One hundred seven nights.”
“What?”
“You asked.”
“No, you tried to distract me.”
“I counted every night I wanted to come downstairs and ask if I could sit with you.”
That stopped me harder than the danger did.
Raphael continued quietly.
“I’d see you carrying nursing textbooks after your shift. Sometimes I’d hear the kitchen light click on at midnight. You were the only person in this house doing something that had nothing to do with me.”
His voice lowered.
“I wanted to know what that felt like.”
My throat tightened.
“Raphael—”
The door handle rattled.
No time.
I closed the hidden panel over him.
Then I stepped into the kitchen and unlocked the door.
Carlo stood outside with two guards.
His eyes moved over me.
“Why did you take so long?”
“I was asleep.”
“In the kitchen?”
“I study here.”
He looked past me.
The water glass remained on the table.
Rainwater from Raphael’s coat dotted the floor.
Carlo saw both.
His expression changed slightly.
“Someone else here?”
“No.”
He stepped inside.
I blocked him.
That was reckless.
Carlo looked down at me.
“Move.”
“This is staff space.”
He almost smiled.
“You work here, Clara. You don’t own it.”
That sentence reminded me exactly where I stood in this house.
Paid well.
Treated politely.
Still removable.
I moved aside.
Carlo searched the kitchen.
Cabinets.
Pantry.
Back entrance.
Then he stopped near the servants’ staircase.
My pulse hammered.
One of the guards reached for the concealed panel.
A voice sounded from the corridor.
“Carlo.”
Everyone turned.
Matteo Orsini stood there.
Perfect suit.
Silver tie.
Not a hair out of place despite the hour.
He looked at me.
Then at the guard’s hand near the staircase.
“Leave her room alone.”
Carlo frowned.
“We haven’t checked—”
“I said leave it.”
Carlo stepped back.
Matteo smiled at me.
“Sorry, Clara. Family confusion.”
I said nothing.
His eyes dropped toward the wet marks on the floor.
Then returned to mine.
“Have you seen Raphael?”
“No.”
The lie came more easily than I expected.
Matteo studied me long enough to make my skin crawl.
Then he nodded.
“If he comes to you, call me immediately.”
“Why would he come to me?”
A small smile.
“That is exactly what I’m trying to understand.”
Then he left.
Carlo followed.
I waited until the hallway became silent before locking the door.
Raphael emerged slowly.
His face had changed.
He had heard everything.
“He suspects you.”
“I noticed.”
“I need to leave.”
“No.”
“Clara.”
“No. If you disappear now, Matteo knows I lied.”
He stared at me.
“Then what do you suggest?”
I thought five steps ahead.
Because that was what I did.
“You sober up.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“You tell me what’s in that ledger.”
“Absolutely not.”
“And then we figure out why your uncle wants you badly enough to search your own staff rooms at two in the morning.”
He looked almost offended.
“You are giving me orders.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Then Raphael sat down.
“Fine.”
I handed him water.
“What’s in the ledger?”
He stared at the glass for several seconds.
Then answered.
“Payments.”
“To who?”
“Doctors. Judges. Police. Contractors.”
My stomach tightened.
“What kind of contractors?”
“The kind who make problems disappear.”
He looked at me.
“And one payment from six years ago had your last name beside it.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“What?”
Raphael reached into the inside pocket of his soaked coat.
He removed a folded photograph.
Not the ledger.
A photograph.
My father.
Standing beside Matteo Orsini.
My father had died six years earlier in what police called a workplace accident.
Raphael placed the image on the table.
On the back was one handwritten line.
ELLISON FAMILY — MEDICAL LEVERAGE.
My throat closed.
Micah.
My brother.
Medical leverage.
I looked up.
Raphael’s face had become grim.
“I think your brother’s treatment has been paying for someone else’s silence.”
And suddenly, hiding a drunk crime boss beneath the servants’ staircase was no longer the most dangerous thing that had happened that night.
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