Chapter 1 - The Poker in the Dark
The silence following my command was heavy enough to drop an elephant.
Rain continued to lash against the towering leaded glass windows of the grand entrance hall, turning the dark lawns of the fourteen-acre estate into a gray, watery blur. My hands were shaking, but I gripped the iron handle of the heavy fireplace poker until my knuckles turned bone white. My pink satin robe fluttered slightly in the cold draft sneaking through the side door, and my bare toes curled against the freezing marble floor.
The two men didn't panic. They didn't reach for their pockets, and they certainly didn't drop to their knees.
The larger man behind—built like a brick wall with a military haircut—simply shifted his weight, his coat sliding back an inch to reveal the polished black leather of a shoulder holster. He looked at me with the tired, clinical expression of a man deciding whether to disarm a toddler or call animal control.
The man in the lead, however, merely looked down at the forged iron point aimed directly at his sternum.
Dominic Caruso.
Seeing him in person was vastly different from looking at the crisp, black-and-white headshots provided in the estate’s corporate briefing folder. The photographs captured his razor-sharp jawline, his thick dark hair, and the imposing height that made him look like a golden-age Hollywood actor who doubled as a mercenary. They did not capture the sheer, suffocating gravity he brought into a room. At forty, he possessed the calm, terrifying stillness of a predator that had never once been hunted.
His dark eyes, almost black under the dim foyer chandelier, moved slowly from the tip of the poker, up my shivering arms, past my floral pajama pants, and finally settled on my face.
"You're holding it wrong," Dominic said. His voice was a rich, low baritone, entirely devoid of surprise. "If you thrust from that angle, the balance point will slip. You'll bruise your wrist and miss my throat entirely."
I didn't lower the poker. "You're forty-eight hours early, Mr. Caruso. And you didn't disarm the interior motion sensors in the west gallery."
The man behind him—Marco, his head of security—let out a subtle, incredulous grunt. "Boss, do you want me to—"
"No," Dominic cut him off, raising a single gloved hand. He kept his eyes locked on mine. "You must be Maya. Aunt Rosa's residential specialist."
"I am," I said, taking half a step back to maintain my distance, keeping the iron point level. "And until I verify your identity with security clearance protocols, you are an unauthorized entry at 12:20 in the morning."
A faint, almost imperceptible twitch appeared at the corner of Dominic’s mouth. It wasn't a smile—men like him didn't smile at midnight intrusions—but it was an acknowledgment of life.
"Marco," Dominic said softly without turning his head. "Show her the credentials before she attempts to impale the estate owner."
Marco grumbled under his breath, reaching into his interior pocket with slow, deliberate movements. He pulled out a leather badge wallet and held it out. "Corporate security code Delta-Seven-Nine. estate access cleared at midnight by the local precinct."
I glanced down at the silver crest and the official seal, then back at Dominic’s face. Slowly, carefully, I lowered the heavy iron poker until the tip rested on the marble floor.
"Your aunt told me you were in New York until Friday," I said, pulling my satin robe tighter around my waist to salvage whatever microscopic shred of professionalism I had left.
"New York became unproductive," Dominic replied, unbuttoning his rain-soaked black wool coat and tossing it to Marco without looking. He wore a dark grey three-piece suit beneath, tailored so precisely it looked like armor. "And I don't give forty-eight hours' notice when I return to my own home."
He took three steps forward, his leather shoes clicking sharply against the stone. He stopped in the center of the grand foyer, his head tilting slightly as he looked around.
The silence returned, but this time, it was different. Dominic’s eyes were no longer looking at me. They were sweeping across the vast expanse of the lower entrance, and his dark eyebrows began to draw together into a dangerous, confused line.
He looked at the grand staircase. Then at the east archway. Then at the antique console table I had spent three hours polishing with lemon oil.
"Where," Dominic asked softly, his baritone dropping an octave, "is the bronze bust of my grandfather?"
I swallowed hard, my grip tightening on the poker again—this time out of professional anxiety rather than physical fear. "In the secondary storage gallery on the third floor. It was suffocating the spatial balance of the entryway. It created a bottleneck for natural light from the south transom."
Dominic turned his head slowly, staring at me as if I had just spoken to him in ancient Sumerian. "You moved my grandfather to the attic?"
"I rearranged the foyer, the sitting room, and the primary library," I corrected defensively, holding my chin up. "Your aunt Rosa’s contract explicitly granted my firm full interior curation authority during the property evaluation phase to fix the flow of the house."
Dominic didn't answer. He turned on his heel and walked toward the primary library, his long strides swift and deliberate. Marco gave me a look that plainly said You are completely insane, before following his boss.
I kicked off my slippers, picked up my poker, and hurried after them.
When I reached the threshold of the grand library, Dominic was standing in the center of the dark, walnut-paneled room. The fire in the hearth had died down to glowing orange embers, casting long, flickering shadows across the floor.
He was staring at the west wall.
For sixty years, that wall had been dominated by a massive, six-foot oil painting of his great-uncle, a notorious syndicate figure from the 1950s who looked like he had never consumed a vegetable or smiled in his entire life. I had removed it two days ago because the gilded frame was warping under the damp drafts coming from the baseboard, replacing it with a small, elegant brass sconce and opening up the natural stone backing.
"You took down the portrait," Dominic whispered. It wasn't an accusation; it was an expression of absolute, stunned disbelief.
"The canvas was deteriorating due to moisture accumulation behind the frame," I explained, stepping into the room and setting the poker against the brick fireplace hearth. "Whoever hung that painting sixty years ago did it to cover a structural flaw in the paneling. The wood behind it was buckling."
Dominic didn't move. He walked slowly toward the exposed walnut wall, his gloved fingers reaching out to touch the dark, bare wood where the heavy portrait had hung for over half a century.
He raised his hand and knocked his knuckles gently against the paneling.
Thump. Thump.
Then he moved his hand four inches to the left and knocked again.
Hollow.
The sound echoed through the quiet library like a muted drumbeat.
Dominic froze. His entire body went completely rigid, his shoulders locking into place. The air in the room suddenly grew ten degrees colder.
May you like
He turned his head slowly, staring past me, his dark eyes wide, unblinking, and filled with a strange, ghost-like shadow I had never seen in any corporate file.
"Who told you about that room?" Dominic whispered.
