Chapter 2 - The Blue Suite
The third floor of the Russo villa smelled of lemon oil, beeswax, and ancient silk.
Unlike the heavy oak and velvet of Damian’s ground-floor quarters, the guest suites were decorated in light, pastel tones—a legacy of Damian’s late mother, who had entertained aristocratic guests from France and Austria forty years ago.
Hannah stood on a short stepladder in the center of the blue guest suite, hanging fresh ivory drapes over the tall French windows that opened onto the stone balcony.
Below her, the inner courtyard was bathed in the pale, cool morning light of late autumn. Two groundskeepers were raking yellow chestnut leaves into small heaps, their iron rakes making a sharp scrape-scrape sound against the flagstones.
The heavy walnut doors of the suite creaked open.
Hannah didn't turn around immediately. She adjusted the brass hook on the drape, keeping her movements slow, mechanical, and entirely unhurried.
“Where is the lace under-sheet?”
Vivien Lombardi stood in the doorway, her slender frame wrapped in a double-breasted white cashmere coat that cost more than Hannah made in two years. Her dark hair was styled in a sharp, flawless bob that framed a face built from high cheekbones, dark red lips, and pale, porcelain skin. She looked like a model from a Milanese fashion catalog who had accidentally stepped into a crime syndicate’s country house.
Behind her stood two men in cheap, ill-fitting dark suits—Moretti’s soldiers, their coats bulging unnaturally under their left arms.
Hannah climbed down from the stepladder, holding her wooden duster in one hand. She lowered her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the gold-trimmed toes of Vivien’s leather boots.
“Mrs. Gable said the lace sheets were being bleached in the lower laundry, Miss Lombardi,” Hannah said softly, her voice carrying just enough of the hoarse rasp from yesterday’s assault to sound pathetic. “They will be dry by noon.”
Vivien walked into the room, her high heels clicking loudly against the marble floor. She didn't look at Hannah’s face. She looked at the bruises on Hannah’s neck with mild, passing disgust, as if noticing a smudge on a wall.
“Bruno was overly enthusiastic yesterday,” Vivien remarked casually, sliding her gloved fingers along the top of a carved rosewood dresser. “He’s an animal, of course, but Damian’s sudden... change in temper has made everyone nervous. The estate needs discipline.”
She turned to face the window, looking down at the courtyard.
“When Mr. Moretti arrives at three o'clock, you will bring the tea tray directly to this room,” Vivien commanded, her voice sharp as glass. “Not the ground floor. Not the library. Up here. And you will use the silver service from the south vault.”
“Yes, Miss Lombardi,” Hannah replied quietly.
Vivien turned her head slightly, her dark eyes flashing with sharp, aristocratic arrogance. “Is Damian asleep?”
“The doctor gave him his afternoon sedative twenty minutes ago, ma'am,” Hannah lied smoothly. “He usually sleeps until five.”
Vivien let out a small, quiet sigh that sounded suspiciously like relief. “Good. The sight of him staring at the ceiling with those dead, pathetic eyes is ruining my appetite.”
She reached into her small leather handbag, pulled out a long gold cigarette case, and tapped a thin white cigarette against her thumb. One of Moretti’s guards stepped forward instantly with a gold lighter, striking the flame with a sharp snap.
Vivien took a deep drag, blowing the blue smoke toward the high ceiling.
“He was such a powerful man once,” she mused, her tone lacking even a trace of sorrow. “It’s remarkable how quickly a piece of flying iron can reduce a giant to an object.”
She walked toward the door, her heels clicking against the marble.
“Make sure the balcony doors are unlocked,” she added without looking back. “Dominic likes the fresh air.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
The heavy doors closed behind them.
Hannah stood alone in the quiet room for five seconds. She let her shoulders drop, letting out a long, slow breath through her mouth.
She walked to the balcony doors, opened them three inches to let the smell of Vivien’s cheap lavender cigarette smoke out, and then knelt by the low mahogany nightstand beside the four-poster bed.
From inside her apron pocket, she pulled out a small, flat brass object—no larger than a five-cent coin. It was a secondary microphone, wired directly to a high-frequency receiver that Carlo had installed inside the hollow base of a decorative urn in Damian’s study three days ago.
She pressed the flat disc firmly against the underside of the nightstand’s lower drawer, where the dark stain of the wood made it completely invisible unless someone crawled flat on their back beneath the bed.
Her fingers were steady now. The fear that had threatened to crush her yesterday when Bruno’s hands closed around her windpipe had evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity.
She was no longer just a victim waiting for the next blow. She was part of the machine.
She smoothed down her grey apron, picked up her stepladder, and left the room.
Ten minutes later, Hannah walked into Damian’s private ground-floor bedchamber carrying a fresh pitcher of iced water and two clean hand towels.
Carlo Bellini was standing near the fireplace, cleaning the barrel of a dark, silenced pistol with an oily rag. Damian sat in his leather wheelchair near the window, dressed in a clean dark suit jacket over a grey wool sweater, his long legs covered once again by the heavy plaid wool blanket.
As soon as the heavy oak doors clicked shut behind her, Damian shifted his head.
His dark eyes were sharp, bright, and completely alert—showing no trace whatever of the "afternoon sedative" Hannah had told Vivien about.
“Is it done?” Damian asked, his low voice filling the quiet room.
“The bug is under the drawer in the blue suite,” Hannah said, setting the water pitcher down on the mahogany table. “Vivien came up to inspect the room ten minutes ago. She brought two of Moretti’s guards with her.”
Carlo paused in his cleaning, looking up with a sharp eye. “Did you recognize them?”
“The taller one has a scar across his left eyebrow,” Hannah reported, leaning against the edge of the table. “He has a tattoo of a black anchor on the back of his right hand. He kept his coat unbuttoned the entire time.”
Carlo nodded slowly. “Pietro Varga. Moretti’s lead enforcer in the dock district. If he’s here, Moretti isn't coming for a polite chat about shipping rights. He’s coming to sign a formal partition agreement.”
Damian’s jaw tightened. He turned his head toward the window, looking out at the rain-soaked gardens.
“Vivien wants the legal titles to the warehouses in La Spezia,” Damian said coldly. “She thinks that if she hands the physical routes over to Moretti, he’ll let her keep her father’s shipping firm intact after I’m buried.”
He looked at Hannah.
“What else did she say?”
Hannah hesitated for a fraction of a second, her fingers twisting slightly in the fabric of her apron.
“She said... she said the sight of you staring at the ceiling was ruining her appetite,” Hannah said flatly, refusing to soften the insult. “She said you were an object now.”
Carlo let out a low, dangerous growl from his throat, his hand tightening around his pistol.
Damian, however, did not explode. A faint, terrible smile touched his lips—a cold, merciless curving of his hard mouth that sent a shiver straight down Hannah’s spine.
“An object,” Damian repeated softly, testing the word on his tongue like a rare wine. “How wonderful. When people treat you like an object, Hannah, they stop checking to see if you have teeth.”
He reached out and picked up a small black earpiece resting on the table beside his chair, fitting it into his ear. He touched a small switch on his collar.
Instantly, the faint, static-laced sound of Vivien’s voice echoed into his ear from the blue suite three floors above.
“...make sure the perimeter guards are turned back toward the south gate at four o'clock,” Vivien’s voice said through the receiver. “Dominic doesn't want Carlo’s men seeing his cars parked in the courtyard.”
“Carlo is a hound,” a man’s low voice replied—Bruno Vescari. “He’s been sniffing around the armory all morning. If he gets too close to the blue suite, I’ll take care of him myself.”
“No blood inside the house until the documents are signed, Bruno,” Vivien commanded sharply. “After that, you can do whatever you want with Carlo. And with that pathetic little maid.”
Damian took the earpiece out of his ear and laid it gently on the table.
He looked up at Carlo. “Bruno is working directly with Vivien now. He’s promised her his faction of thirty men from the dockyards.”
“We can take Bruno out right now,” Carlo said, his tone as casual as if he were suggesting a change in the dinner menu. “One shot in the basement laundry. Nobody hears a thing.”
“No,” Damian said instantly. “If Bruno disappears now, Moretti will smell a trap and pull his men back into the city. I don't just want Bruno, Carlo. I want Moretti, his entire lieutenant structure, and every contract Vivien has signed with them in one room, at one time.”
He turned his eyes back to Hannah.
“You’re bringing the tea tray to the blue suite at three o'clock,” Damian said.
“Yes,” she replied.
“When you enter that room, Moretti will have four armed men inside,” Damian warned her, his voice dropping into a register of intense, protective gravity. “They will be arrogant. They will be careless. They will treat you like wallpaper. But if anything looks wrong—if Moretti’s men start checking the room or if Bruno looks at you twice—you drop that tray and you walk straight out to the service stairs. Do you understand me?”
Hannah looked into his dark, iron-hard eyes. She saw the genuine, unyielding concern sitting behind his cold strategic mind—a concern he had never shown for his fiancée, his capos, or his business partners.
“I know how to carry a tray, Mr. Russo,” Hannah said quietly. “And I know how to keep my head down.”
Damian stared at her for three long seconds. Slowly, he reached out, his long fingers touching the edge of her grey apron cuff, a gesture so subtle it was almost invisible.
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“Be careful, Hannah,” he said softly.
“I always am,” she replied.
