Chapter 1
The heavy oak door clicked shut without a sound. Alessandro Romano stepped into the quiet expanse of his Chicago estate, loosening his silk tie. He was three hours early. In his world, arriving unannounced was the easiest way to catch someone making a mistake.
The marble hallways were pitch-black, save for the pale moonlight cutting through the arched windows. Then, a faint sound broke the silence.
Humming.
It was tiny, uneven, and coming from the shoe room near the service entrance.
Alessandro moved like a shadow across the limestone floor. He reached the half-open door and stopped.
Sitting on a small wooden stool was three-year-old Zoe Williams. She was wearing an oversized cream nightdress, her brown curls bouncing as her tiny arms scrubbed back and forth. In her lap was one of Alessandro’s handmade Italian Oxford shoes.
Beside her, a battered tin of black polish sat overturned. The dark paste was smeared everywhere—across the polished hardwood, all over her little hands, on her nightdress, and streaked directly across her rosy cheek.
The expensive shoe in her hands was completely ruined, choked in thick, greasy wax.
Alessandro stepped into the doorway. The wooden floor creaked beneath his weight.
Zoe froze. Her wide brown eyes snapped up. The metal tin slipped from her fingers and clattered against the floorboards.
"Please don't send us away," she whispered, her voice trembling.
Alessandro did not yell. He did not move with anger. Slowly, he knelt down until his piercing eyes were level with hers.
"Where is your mother, little one?"
Zoe pointed a polish-covered thumb toward the servants' wing upstairs. She swallowed hard, tears welling in her eyes. "Mama is burning hot. She couldn't get out of bed." Zoe wiped her nose with the back of her hand, only smearing the black wax further across her face. "Mama said we lose our home if she can’t work. I’m doing her chores. I can be good. I promise."
Alessandro looked at the trembling three-year-old, then down at the ruined two-thousand-dollar shoe. Gently, he took the rough polishing cloth from her fingers. He pulled a pristine linen handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped her messy, shaking hands inside it.
"Nobody is sending you away tonight," Alessandro said softly.
As Zoe shifted on the stool, a folded piece of yellow construction paper slipped from her pocket and fluttered to the floor.
Alessandro picked it up and unfolded it.
It was a crude crayon drawing. It showed the estate’s tall wrought-iron security gate, a dark SUV, and a tall man in a black suit with a large red X drawn across his face.
Zoe pointed a small finger toward the rain-streaked window overlooking the estate’s outer drive.
"That's the bad man," she said.
Alessandro stared at the drawing. The broad shoulders. The buzz cut. The holstered sidearm sketched in black crayon. It was Victor Hale. His head of personal security. The man who had guarded his family for twelve years.
Alessandro’s head snapped toward the hallway security monitors mounted on the wall.
At that exact second, every exterior screen flickered and went dead.
The perimeter floodlights died. The mansion plunged into total blackness.
Alessandro pulled Zoe off the stool, tucking her behind his broad frame as he stepped against the wall.
Through the rain-washed glass of the window, twin headlights cut through the storm just outside the front gate. An unfamiliar black SUV idled by the intercom.
Standing beside it was Victor.
Victor wasn't alone. A second man stepped out of the vehicle, dressed in a long wool coat. The stranger lifted a golden electronic access card against the scanner—the master cipher card that was supposed to be locked inside the floor safe of Alessandro’s private study.
Zoe gripped Alessandro’s pant leg, her tiny voice barely a breath.
"That’s the man who gave Victor your key."
Alessandro narrowed his eyes, staring through the downpour at the stranger's illuminated face. His chest tightened as the recognition hit him like ice.
May you like
The man holding the master key was Carter Vance—the disgraced family attorney who had vanished three years ago, the exact night Alessandro's brother Julian was presumed dead.
The heavy iron gate began to slide open.
