Chapter 3 - THE RAT IN THE WALLSThe digital clock on the nursery wall glowed a sharp 3:14 AM.
Upstairs, the household was dead silent. But downstairs, in the shadows of the expansive kitchen, something was moving.
Victoria Kensington was not crying in the sub-basement.
The sub-basement cell—the one Leo’s men used for low-level informants and captured rivals—had a secondary architectural feature that only three people in the entire estate knew about.
A nineteenth-century maintenance tunnel built by the original bootlegger who owned the mansion during the Prohibition era.
Victoria, bruised, disheveled, and burning with a psychotic, murderous fury, had slipped through the rusted access grate behind the old coal furnace before the guards could even lock the outer iron door. She knew the layout of the mansion better than any servant, and she knew the hidden service corridors like the back of her hand.
Now, her bare feet stepped silently across the marble tile of the kitchen.
She wasn't running away.
She was going to the armory.
Victoria had lived in Leo Rossi’s world long enough to understand the unspoken rules of the Chicago underworld. If a kingpin is brought down, it’s never by the police—it’s by a vacuum of power. And right now, Leo was distracted. He was up in the nursery coddling a wheezing, sickly brat who should have been put out of her misery months ago.
And standing in the middle of it all was Beatrice.
That fat, pathetic, clumsy piece of trash, Victoria thought, her teeth grinding together so hard her jaw ached. She ruined everything. My wedding. My future. My throne.
Victoria slipped into the dark corridor leading directly to Leo’s private security vault.
The door to the armory was biometric, but Victoria had spent two years memorizing the override codes while sleeping beside the syndicate boss. With shaking, blood-streaked fingers, she punched a six-digit sequence into the keypad and scanned her right thumb against the glass plate.
BEEP.
A green light flashed.
The heavy steel door slid open with a soft, hydraulic hiss.
Rows of assault rifles, customized handguns, tactical knives, and sleek ceramic suppressors lined the illuminated racks inside. Victoria didn't hesitate. She reached out and snatched a compact, suppressed 9mm Glock pistol, shoving an extra magazine into the pocket of her silk robe.
Then, she grabbed something else—a heavy steel crowbar resting near the bottom shelf.
“Let’s see how tough the fat maid is when her skull is caved in,” Victoria hissed to the empty room, a manic, unhinged smile spreading across her bloodied face.
Back in the nursery upstairs, Beatrice was sitting in an armchair by the window, watching over Lily.
The little girl had finally fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep, her breathing steady and rhythmic under the soft glow of the bedside lamp.
Leo stood by the door, his phone pressed to his ear. He was speaking in rapid, hushed Italian to someone on the other end—presumably his second-in-command, Marco, giving orders to lock down every highway, airport, and train station within a three-hundred-mile radius of Chicago.
He clicked the phone off and slid it into his pocket.
He turned his gaze toward Beatrice. For the first time all night, the terrifying mob boss looked tired. There were deep shadows beneath his dark eyes, and the harsh lines of his face seemed slightly softened.
“Your hand,” Leo said, pointing his chin toward Beatrice’s swollen, purple fingers.
Beatrice instinctively pulled her hand into her lap, flushing red. “It’s… it’s fine, Mr. Rossi. Just a few bruised knuckles. Nothing broken, I don't think.”
“It’s broken,” Leo said flatly, walking over with slow, deliberate strides. He reached out and gently—surprisingly gently—took her wrist, turning her hand over to inspect the damage.
Beatrice held her breath. Coming into direct physical contact with Leo Rossi was something the staff only whispered about in nightmares. His hands had signed death warrants; they had choked traitors in dark alleys.
Yet right now, his touch was steady, warm, and remarkably careful.
“You stood in front of that door,” Leo said, his eyes locking onto hers. “Knowing who she was. Knowing what I would have done if you had stayed out of it.”
“She was suffocating, sir,” Beatrice whispered, her voice dropping to a vulnerable register. “I spent my whole life stepping aside. I let people walk over me, push me down, make me feel like I took up too much space in the world. But… when I heard that little girl stop breathing… I realized something.”
“What did you realize?” Leo asked, his voice low and attentive.
“That taking up space isn’t a crime,” Beatrice said, lifting her chin to meet his intense gaze head-on. “Especially when someone else’s life depends on it.”
Leo stared at her for a long, charged moment. A faint, humorless smirk touched the corner of his lips—a rare expression that made his handsome face look even more dangerous.
“You’re a lot more than a maid, Beatrice Miller,” he murmured.
Before Beatrice could process the words, a sharp, metallic scrape echoed from the dark hallway outside the nursery door.
Both of their heads snapped toward the entrance.
May you like
The hallway light flickered once.
Then went completely dark.
