Chapter 8 - The Ledger of Twelve Thousand
By midnight, the men from New York had departed in their armored cars, their tail-lights vanishing into the white fog that was rolling in off the lake.
The main house was dark, save for the single yellow lamp burning in the third-floor library.
Clara sat in the low leather chair near the fire, holding a cup of hot chamomile tea that Mrs. Gable had brought her from the kitchen.
Bruno lay across her boots, his broad chest rising and falling in deep, peaceful sleep, his dark paws twitching slightly as he chased imaginary rabbits through his dreams.
Matteo stood behind his walnut desk, going through a stack of legal documents with a thin gold pen.
The fire crackled softly in the grate.
“You lied to Don Saleri,” Clara said quietly into the silence.
Matteo didn't look up from his paper. “About what?”
“You told him I was the head of your security.”
“You are,” Matteo said, signing his name at the bottom of a blue-lined page with a sharp flick of his wrist.
“I’m a maid,” Clara said. “I clean the harness room and give medicine to a dog.”
Matteo set his gold pen down. He pulled a small leather ledger from the top drawer of his desk, opened it to a page marked with a red silk ribbon, and turned it so it faced Clara across the desk.
“Come here,” he said.
Clara stood up, stepping carefully around Bruno’s tail, and walked to the edge of the dark walnut table.
She looked down at the ledger.
Written in Matteo’s sharp, slanted handwriting were two lines of figures:
Joseph Hayes — Debt Assignment (Peoria): $12,000.00
Services Rendered (Estate Security / Canines): -$12,000.00
Balance: $0.00
Clara stared at the page. The numbers seemed to swim under the yellow light of the desk lamp.
“You... you paid it?” she whispered.
“The debt is cleared,” Matteo said. “Your father’s eight acres in Beloit are back in his name. The deed was mailed to his lawyer this afternoon.”
Clara swallowed hard. Her chest felt strange—tight and heavy, as if she had been running through deep snow for five miles.
“Why?” she asked, raising her eyes to his. “I’ve only been here six weeks.”
Matteo stood up from his chair. He walked around the corner of the desk, stopping two feet from her, his long shadow falling over her face.
“Because six weeks ago,” Matteo said softly, “I had twenty men in this house who obeyed me because they were afraid I would kill them. I had a dog that obeyed no one because he was afraid everyone would hurt him.”
He reached out his right hand—not to touch her face, but to touch the small silver acorn brooch she wore on her wool collar.
“Now,” Matteo continued, his voice dropping into a deep, gravelly tone that was lower than she had ever heard it, “I have a dog that sits at my feet because he knows you’re standing behind my chair. And I have twenty men who look at you walking through the yard with five feet of rope and wonder what else I’m keeping in this house that they don't understand.”
Clara looked into his pale blue eyes.
There was no coldness in them now. There was a dark, quiet intensity that made her heart beat twice as fast against her ribs.
“I am not your security, Mr. Moretti,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
May you like
“No,” Matteo agreed, his hand dropping from her collar to take her scraped palm into his long, warm fingers. “You are the only thing in this county that doesn't have a price on it.”
From the rug near the hearth, Bruno opened one yellow eye, gave a long, contentment-filled groan, and went back to sleep.
