Chapter 8 - The Viper in the Council
Hannah did not flinch beneath his question. She took another step toward the desk, stopping beside the white gardenias, her slender frame radiating the unyielding courage of a mother who had crossed an ocean of wolves to keep her cub alive.
“Because Julian gave me one final instruction before he boarded that plane, Mr. Caruso,” Hannah said, her brown eyes unblinking, holding his gaze with absolute clarity.
Dominic’s brows drew together. “What instruction?”
“He said: ‘If anything happens to me, it means someone inside Dominic’s private council sold my coordinates. Someone who sits at his dining table is feeding our locations to the Marcones.’”
The words fell like executioner’s stones into the quiet room.
Dominic did not move. He did not breathe.
Someone inside the council.
“Julian didn't know who it was,” Hannah continued, her voice trembling with the memory of that terrifying dawn. “He told me that if I walked into the Caruso Tower with a pregnant belly, the traitor would have me silenced before Dominic ever saw my face. He told me that until he could verify the leak himself, Dominic’s house was a field of landmines.”
She looked down at her simple black flats, then at the gray linen of her dress.
“When the news confirmed his death,” Hannah whispered, “I knew the traitor had won. I spent five months hiding in a basement apartment in New Hampshire, paying cash for black-market prenatal care. When Julianna was born, I realized I couldn't run forever. I had nine hundred dollars left in an envelope. I knew that eventually, the Marcones or your own investigators would run my social security number if I tried to register for state aid.”
She lifted her chin, looking at Dominic with a quiet, sovereign dignity that demanded reverence.
“I bought the papers for ‘Hannah Reed’ from a forged document broker in South Boston for six hundred dollars,” she said. “And then I applied to the domestic agency that services your private estates. I took the lowest position on the roster. I scrubbed the floors. I polished the silver. I watched your guards. I watched your visitors.”
A faint, bitter smile touched Hannah’s lips.
“I came here to see who you were, Dominic Caruso,” Hannah said softly. “I came to see if you were the monster the newspapers described, or if you were the brother Julian loved enough to die for. I wanted to see if this house was safe for his daughter before I took her across the ocean.”
Dominic sat in the leather chair, looking at her as if she were an apparition.
She had not run to the federal witness protection program. She had not sold Julian’s story to the tabloids. She had walked directly into the lion’s den, dressed in a servant’s apron, carrying the most precious secret in the world beneath her heart, solely to evaluate the king before deciding whether to trust him with his brother’s child.
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A sudden, unfamiliar sensation broke behind Dominic’s ribs—a feeling that was vast, heavy, and dangerously close to awe.
“She’s safe, Hannah,” Dominic murmured, his voice thick with an emotion that no associate had ever heard from his lips. “Under this roof, she is completely safe.”
