Chapter 5 - FOOTSTEPS IN THE SERVANTS’ WING
Adrian remained crouched, his hands resting lightly on his knees, his dark gaze never leaving her tear-streaked face.
The gale outside rattled the sash of the window, but the air inside the alcove felt completely still, thick with the scent of rain, damp wool, and the faint, sweet trace of lavender soap from her apron.
“Why?” Adrian asked.
The single syllable was stripped of all anger toward her, carried only by a quiet, lethal demand for clarity.
Claire did not answer with words immediately.
Her head turned slowly, her trembling neck stiff, her pale blue eyes looking past his broad, tattooed shoulder toward the far end of the private corridor.
There, past the ornate bronze double doors of the master suite and the tall grandfather clock ticking silently in the shadows, stood a heavy, unadorned oak door. It was painted in the same dark slate as the wainscoting, designed to blend into the architecture—the private service entrance that connected the family’s personal quarters to the rear stairwell leading down into the staff wing. The corridor beyond that door was uncarpeted, narrow, and perpetually dark at night, lined with the utilitarian bedrooms assigned to the live-in domestic staff.
Claire stared at that door as if she were looking at the mouth of an open grave.
Her hand reached out, her small, trembling fingers unconsciously touching the sleeve of her own black dress, clutching her arm as if feeling an old, invisible bruise.
“Someone keeps coming to my door at night,” Claire whispered.
The confession was so quiet that Adrian had to lean in slightly to hear it over the rush of the storm against the glass.
“When?” Adrian asked, his voice low, gravelly, and flat as a frozen lake.
“Every night since Tuesday,” she breathed, her chin quivering, fresh tears pooling along her lashes. “At first… at first I thought it was just the wind in the hallway. The floorboards creaking. But then… then the handle began to turn.”
She closed her eyes, shuddering violently as the memory played behind her lids.
“It turns very slowly, Mr. Moretti. Back and forth. Testing the lock. And then… then someone leans against the wood. I can hear them breathing through the crack at the bottom. Last night… last night whoever it was… they slid a small metal strip under the jamb, trying to pop the latch. I pushed my dresser against the door, but the wood… the wood is old. It wouldn't hold if someone threw their shoulder into it.”
Her eyes fluttered open, locking back onto Adrian’s face, filled with an agonizing, raw desperation.
“I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought I heard the hinges. I was going crazy down there, sir. So… so I took my blanket and the poker from the staff parlor fireplace, and I walked up the back stairs. I know I’m not supposed to be here. I know you could fire me right now. But I knew… I knew nobody would dare come to this end of the hall. Nobody would dare touch this door.”
A terrible, suffocating silence settled over Adrian Moretti.
The sanctuary of his estate had been breached from the inside. In his house, where three hundred men took orders from his word alone, a member of his domestic staff—a woman whose safety was his implicit, sovereign responsibility under the ancient codes of his family—had been hunted down like prey in the dark, driven from her bed to sleep on cold marble with a brass poker in her hands.
Adrian slowly rose to his full height.
The transition was terrifying to witness. The crouching protector vanished, replaced by the towering, absolute monarch of the Moretti empire. His black silk robe billowed slightly as he stood, his muscular chest rising with a deep, deliberate breath that expanded his broad frame until he seemed to fill the entire corridor.
His eyes were burning with an icy, apocalyptic resolve.
He didn't speak. He reached his right hand into the deep pocket of his black silk sleep trousers, his fingers closing around his encrypted satellite phone.
He intended to dial Leo, his head of outer perimeter security, and order an immediate, silent lockdown of the entire estate. Every guard, every enforcer, every lieutenant sleeping in the compound would be dragged from their beds into the grand courtyard within five minutes. And whoever had walked that service hallway would be found before the sun rose.
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He pulled the phone out, his thumb already hovering over the speed-dial button.
Before his screen could even illuminate, a sudden, frantic movement broke his focus.
