Chapter 6 - Gloves at Midnight
At eight o'clock that evening, Adeline was summoned to the third-floor parlor by a young maid who looked as though she were delivering a death warrant.
Rosalind Raldi sat in a high-backed velvet armchair near a roaring fireplace. She was eighty-two years old, built like a iron rod, with snow-white hair styled into an intricate crown and a heavy oak cane resting against her knee.
She was Cassian’s grandmother—the matriarch who had held the Raldi syndicate together through two wars, three rival clan invasions, and the deaths of her husband and two sons.
She did not offer Adeline a seat. She simply pointed her cane at the carpet three feet in front of her.
"Stand there," Rosalind commanded. Her voice was sharp, dry, and terrifyingly clear.
Adeline walked forward and stood on the designated spot. She did not lower her eyes. She had spent seven years dealing with arrogant surgeons, furious department heads, and hysterical family members in the trauma bay; an old woman with a cane was not going to make her bow.
Rosalind stared at her for two full minutes, examining Adeline’s simple dress, her pale skin, her clear hazel eyes, and her unadorned hands.
"Twenty-eight years old," Rosalind said, listing facts from memory. "Registered nurse. Trauma specialization. Father was a deadbeat gambler; mother is rotting in a nursing home with a broken brain. No money. No connections. No family leverage."
Adeline’s jaw tightened, but she remained silent.
"Do you know why my grandson married you, girl?" Rosalind asked, leaning forward on her cane.
"Because I signed a contract that solves a problem for him," Adeline replied steadily.
"He married you because you are quiet, you are desperate, and you have no brothers who will try to take his territory," Rosalind spat. "I do not need you to love him. Love in this family is a disease that gets men shot in their driveways. My husband died because he stopped to buy my sister lilies. My eldest son died because he trusted his wife's brother."
Rosalind tapped her cane heavily against the floorboards. BANG.
"All I require from you," the old woman continued, "is that when the photographs are taken at the annual gala, you stand close enough to him that the city thinks he has a home. You smile when the cameras flash, you keep your mouth shut about business, and you never, under any circumstances, bring shame to the Raldi name."
Adeline looked at the matriarch. "And what if I decide to be more than a prop, Mrs. Raldi?"
Rosalind’s eyes narrowed into terrifying slits. She stared at Adeline for a long, silent moment before giving a cold, dry chuckle that sounded like dead leaves scraping across stone.
"Then I suggest you buy a very good insurance policy, my dear," Rosalind said quietly. "Go to bed. The house gets cold at night."
Adeline turned and walked out of the parlor, her blood boiling beneath her skin.
As she made her way down the dimly lit hallway toward her quarters, she passed the main kitchen. The door was slightly ajar, spilling a thin strip of yellow light across the dark floorboards.
Adeline stopped.
Cassian was sitting alone at the long butcher-block table in the center of the vast, empty room.
The wealthiest, most dangerous man in Chicago was sitting under a single hanging lightbulb, eating a stale piece of rye bread and drinking cold black coffee from a chipped ceramic mug.
There were no servants attending him. No bodyguards standing behind his chair. Just a lonely man sitting in a dark room at midnight, eating the meal of a prison inmate.
Adeline was about to step past the door when her eyes caught his hands.
Cassian was holding the bread in his right hand, lifting it to his mouth.
He was still wearing his black leather gloves.
Inside his own home. At midnight. With no guests, no enemies, and no cameras watching.
He chewed slowly, his dark eyes fixed on the empty wall across from him, his gloved fingers holding the crust with a strange, defensive tightness.
Adeline stood in the shadows of the hallway, a cold shiver running down her spine.
Why would a man wear gloves to eat bread in his own kitchen?
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What was he hiding beneath the leather?
She retreated quietly down the corridor, returning to her room with three burning questions in her mind—questions that no one in this massive, silent house would ever dare answer.
