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The king’s castle itself.
“Out,” Elio ordered when the car pulled to a stop. I got out carefully, shivering in my waitress uniform. Elio eyed the crest of La Leonora on my shirt, his face devoid of emotion.
He turned toward the entrance, the imposing stone steps leading in a graceful curve toward huge doors. The kind someone could ride a horse through if they were so inclined. There was no sneaking in the back here. Whatever the De Sanctis family did to people like me, witnesses, they did it in plain sight. That wasn’t nearly as reassuring as it should have been.
“Watch the steps, they get slippery in the fall.”
A humorless laugh left me at Elio’s warning. He was warning me about falling when his boss was about to kill me?
“Something funny?” he asked flatly, shooting me a curious look.
I shook my head, but my mind was already spinning.Get a grip, Charlie. If not for yourself, for Lucy.
Lucy, that’s right. I had to protect Lucy. I had to do something to save Lucy. Lucy was the only one who mattered.
Inside, the house was silent as a tomb. Lucy’s hand gripped mine so tight I could feel the blood leaving my fingers. Only the ticking of an intimidating grandfather clock broke the silence. Dark red wallpaper lined the walls, and black-and-white tiles covered the floor. The farther we moved into the maze of the building, the more opulent the surroundings became. This wasn’t a place of business; it was an inner sanctum.
Home of the boss.
The boss.
We arrived at a huge door, ornate, but somehow also fortified. Elio knocked with a distinctive rap and opened it. The door opened soundlessly and swung inward. Fear worked through me, firing adrenaline through my blood. As a nursing student, I was trained to focus and get the job done in tense, high-stress situations. But this was different. It was personal. It was about Lucy.
Elio touched my lower back to move me forward when I failed to take a step over the threshold. The wallpaper around the door was a rich red brocade, scrolling vines adorned with apples and leaves. The door was old-fashioned, wooden with studs and metal reinforcements.
For a second, I had the thought that if I moved over this threshold, I’d be taking a step into another realm. A world where the rules didn’t exist as I knew them… I didn’t want to go inside. I wanted to hide. But then Lucy’s slight weight pressed into my side, and I knew I had no choice.
I inched forward, shooting Elio a frown so forbidding, he dropped his hand from my back. I took it as a win, even though his subsequent smirk ruined my illusions of power.
“Stay behind me. Let me do the talking,” I muttered to Lucy. The thugs who had started it all crowded into the room behind us.
Inside the office, the feeling of otherworldliness continued. It wasn’t an office from this time, that was certain. A huge leather-bound desk dominated the middle, and oil paintings were mounted at intervals around the room. A real fire burned in a hearth, and one of the walls was packed with bookcases that reached right to the high ceiling, crammed with hardbacks.
A wooden cross was nailed above a portrait of a beautiful woman. The portrait was an oil painting, and the subject was serene, staring at the painter with a wistfulness that drew the eye. The sight of the crucifix was jarring. I wouldn’t have expected something religious from a man who had so much blood on his hands. Maybe he was the type to believe that as long as he confessed to his numerous sins, he was absolved. As a woman who’d knelt before such a crucifix many times at Mercy House and waited for judgment, my life had come full circle.
“Boss,” Elio said quietly, once again pushing me forward when I froze. I had no choice but to focus on the person in front of me. Renato De Sanctis. In the flesh.
It was dimly lit, but that didn’t hide the man who sat behind the desk at all. If anything, he seemed like a creature who thrived in the darkness.
“Well, if it isn't the woman we've been looking for. Welcome to Casa Nera, Miss Burke.” His voice was deep, holding a hint of smoke that brushed through my mind and fogged my throat.
I’d never thought of a voice as intoxicating before, but now I knew that one could be. There was a tinge of an Italian accent, just a touch, and a dryly amused undertone that told me it wasn’t anything unusual to have two people dragged before him this early in the day.
“She was finishing her shift at Le Leonora,” Elio said coolly.
“Was she? Nurse by day and waitress by night. You certainly are a busy little lamb, aren’t you?” The boss’s voice was deep and warm, reminding me of the expensive cognac I served at work. His words elegantly communicated volumes. He knew everything about me.
The lamb comparison didn’t fill me with confidence, considering how wolfish these men were, but when I locked eyes with the man behind the desk, I had no room in my mind to dwell on it.
He pushed all other thoughts out.
Growing up dirt-poor, the child of well-meaning Irish immigrants who had gotten in with the wrong people and died poor and unnoticed, I’d learned important lessons about power. My parents had never had any, and no one had cared when they died, except Lucy and me. The remnants they’d left behind. In the group home, I’d never had any power either. In my hospital work, the doctors held the power, and I’d planned that someday, somehow, I’d work my way up there and be just like them. One day, I’d have power, too. People would listen when I spoke. People would respect me.
Standing there in the inner sanctum of thecapoof the De Sanctis family, I realized I’d never known true power until now.
True power was tangible. It radiated off of this man in waves as he watched me with dark eyes. It was present in every line of his body, the arrogant tilt of his regal head, and the curve of his beautiful mouth. It emanated from him as he inclined his head toward Elio.
“Bring her closer.” It wasn’t a request.
