Chapter 1 - The Weight of Marble
The heavy oak doors of the east foyer slammed against their brass stoppers with a sound like a rifle shot.
"Hold her."
That was the first command Evelyn Cross gave after I stepped into the grand gallery carrying fifty pounds of freshly starched Egyptian cotton linens. Before I could shift the stack to see around the top hem, two men in black suits grabbed my arms.
The man on my right grabbed my wrist hard enough to pinch the nerves leading into my thumb. The guard on my left caught my elbow, twisting my arm behind my back until the starched sheets tumbled out of my grip, hitting the white Italian marble floor in a heavy, muffled heap.
My wire-rimmed glasses slipped down the bridge of my wet nose.
"Excuse me?" I said, my voice higher than I wanted it to be. "What are you doing?"
Evelyn Cross glided toward me across the stone, her four-inch Christian Louboutin heels clicking against the floor like precision clockwork. She managed the internal operations of the Moretti estate with the cold, bloodless discipline of a Victorian headmistress running a workhouse. She was forty-six years old, wore a size zero, and kept her bleach-blonde hair pulled back into a knot so tight it pulled the skin around her eyes completely flat.
She stopped precisely six feet away, resting one manicured hand on her hip.
"Mrs. Bellamy’s diamond cuff is missing," Evelyn said. "The three-carat platinum piece."
I blinked through my smudged lenses. "Okay."
Her mouth twitched downward. "Okay?"
"Yes," I said, trying to pull my left arm free. The guard tightened his grip until my fingers went cold. "That sounds awful. But why are you grabbing me?"
Around the perimeter of the double-height foyer, thirty-two house staff members stood frozen. Footmen, junior housekeepers, table attendants, and kitchen assistants stood along the walls like decorative statues. Not a single person looked me in the eye. They looked at the floor, at the ceiling, at the five-thousand-dollar oil paintings of Venetian harbors—anywhere except at the thirty-two-year-old woman being pinned against the wall.
Evelyn folded her arms across her silk blouse. "You were assigned to deep-clean the east dressing suite between one and two o'clock."
"So were three other women," I replied, forcing my breathing to stay steady. "Carla was doing the drapery, and Maya was polishing the silver fixtures on the vanity."
"Carla and Maya have worked for the Moretti family for eleven years," Evelyn said smoothly. "You have been here four months. And you were the last person seen leaving that wing before Mrs. Bellamy noticed her jewelry tray was empty."
"That isn't true. I left at one-forty-five to take these linens to the press room."
Evelyn’s face changed. It was a subtle shift—a slight lift of her chin, a faint tightening around her thin lips. It was an expression I recognized down to my bones.
I had seen that same look on my senior prom date’s face when his friends laughed about him taking the "plus-size charity case" to the dance. I had seen it on my ex-fiancé Daniel’s face whenever we went out to dinner with his corporate friends and I ordered anything other than a side salad. I had seen it on the face of the human resources director at the Drake Hotel when she took one look at my size-eighteen frame and gently told me that "guest-facing concierge positions require a specific physical presentation."
It was the look people wore when they decided you were an eyesore who ought to apologize for taking up oxygen in their presence.
Evelyn gestured toward the deep pockets of my dark navy housekeeping apron. "Search her."
My blood ran cold. "No."
The guard on my left hesitated for a fraction of a second, his grip loosening just enough for me to pull my wrist back an inch.
Evelyn’s eyes widened slightly. "What did you say to me?"
"I said no," I said clearly. My voice echoed off the barrel-vaulted ceiling. "You can inspect my locker in the basement. You can review every security camera in the east corridor. You can call the Chicago Police Department right now and let them bring a female officer to perform a legal search. But these two men are not puting their hands inside my apron or under my clothes."
Evelyn let out a short, high-pitched laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete. "There it is."
"There what is?"
"The hostility," she said, taking two slow steps closer until I could smell her lavender perfume. "The chip on your shoulder. You’ve had it since the day I hired you out of that agency. You walk around this house looking at the furnishings like you're above the work, Sophie. You act like you're doing us a favor by scrubbing our floors."
"I do my job," I said through my teeth. "I work ten hours a day, six days a week. I don't steal, and I don't let security guards assault me because you mislaid a bracelet."
"Assault?" Evelyn sneered. "You work in a house you couldn't afford to visit as a catering temp. Try remembering your place."
"I know my place," I replied, staring directly into her pale grey eyes. "I am an employee here. I am not your property."
Evelyn’s face turned red under her foundation. "If you were innocent, you wouldn't be hiding behind legalities."
Then her right hand swung back and struck me across the left side of my face.
The slap cracked through the stone hall like a whip. The force of it jerked my head sideways, sending my wire-rimmed glasses flying off my nose. They hit the marble three feet away; the right lens popped out of its frame with a sharp clink.
My back teeth sliced into the soft inner lining of my lower lip. The thick, copper taste of blood filled my mouth almost instantly.
For three seconds, nobody moved.
Near the base of the grand staircase, one of the junior footmen let out a nervous, high-pitched gasp. Someone else whispered, "Oh, God."
Nobody stepped forward. Nobody told her she couldn't do that.
I stood there with my head bowed, my hair falling out of its neat bun and framing my cheeks, watching a single drop of my blood drip off my chin and land squarely in the center of a white cotton sheet on the floor.
The pain in my face was nothing compared to the suffocating weight of the silence around me.
That silence was an old acquaintance. It was the same silence that filled my family's dining room every time my mother casually mentioned that my cousin had lost twenty pounds while looking at my second plate of dinner. It was the silence of every room I had ever entered where people made instantaneous calculations about my worth based entirely on the size of my clothes and the curvature of my waist.
They might not have swung the hand that hit me. But by standing still, every single person in that foyer was agreeing that I deserved it.
Evelyn leaned down, her face inches from mine, her voice dropping into a low, vicious purr. "Now. Are you going to empty your pockets, or do I have them strip you right here in front of everyone?"
"Take your hands off her."
The voice didn't come from the foyer. It came from the darkened archway leading into the west administrative wing.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't shouted. But the tone possessed a dense, terrifying weight that caused both guards to drop their hands instantly, stepping three feet back as if they had just touched high-voltage wire.
Gabriel Moretti stepped out of the shadows.
He was thirty-eight years old, six-foot-two, and built like a middleweight fighter who wore tailored Italian wool. He was dressed in a dark charcoal three-piece suit without a tie, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar to reveal the edge of a thick, dark scar running along his collarbone.
The newspapers called him a reclusive billionaire logistics magnate who had modernized Chicago’s commercial shipping docks. The men who worked the docks, the detectives at the 1st District precinct, and the senior members of the outfit called him the boss.
Gabriel walked slowly across the foyer. He didn't look at the fallen linens. He didn't look at the thirty-two employees standing against the wall. He didn't look at Evelyn Cross.
His dark gray eyes fixed entirely on my face. On the red imprint of Evelyn’s fingers across my cheek, and the thin trickle of blood running down my chin.
"Kitchen," Gabriel said softly.
I thought he was telling me to clean myself up and get out of his sight.
I bent down with trembling hands, picked up my broken frames and the loose lens from the floor, and clutched them against my chest. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry for the disturbance."
I turned and pushed through the heavy wooden swinging door that led into the main estate kitchen.
May you like
Gabriel followed me inside.
Behind us, the heavy oak door swung shut. Then, with a distinct, metallic click, Gabriel turned the brass deadbolt from the inside, locking the entire house out.
