Chapter 1
“Would you let me hold you?” The polishing cloth slipped from my fingers and hit the floor with a wet slap, while the most feared man in Chicago sat dying beneath a gray blanket and waited for an answer no one had probably dared give him before.
Rain hammered the sealed windows of the Varelli mansion, turning Lake Michigan into darkness beyond the glass. Inside Luca Varelli’s bedroom, everything felt unnaturally still—the walnut cabinets, pale stone fireplace, even the antique clock that had been silenced after he became ill.
I had cleaned his house for seventeen months.
Until three weeks earlier, Luca had barely spoken to me.
Now he was thirty-six, frighteningly thin, breathing so shallowly that I could hear the hesitation between each inhale. Six months earlier, magazines had photographed him stepping from black cars in tailored suits while men twice his age followed behind.
In public, he was called a businessman.
In private, people used words like crime boss.
“Sir?” I finally said.
“One time,” Luca whispered. “Just once.”
I looked toward the partially open door, then back at him.
“You poured the tea on the floor.”
His eyes sharpened immediately. “What?”
“There’s no stain near the cup. You threw it far enough away so Mrs. Vale would send someone in to clean it.”
For half a second, the old Luca appeared.
“I asked her for you.”
“She would’ve asked why.”
“So I gave her a reason.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
Most people would never have spoken to Luca Varelli that way.
But I was exhausted, and a dying man was still a man.
I bent to retrieve the cloth.
“Mara.”
I stopped when he used my name.
He opened his bedside drawer and removed a tiny hand-stitched cotton pouch.
My stomach tightened.
“You dropped this four weeks ago.”
“You went through my things?”
“I had it tested.”
I stared at him. “You did what?”
“Dried orange peel. Cedar. Lavender. Nothing else.”
For a second, I genuinely wondered whether I had misheard him.
“You sent my sachet to a laboratory?”
“I needed to know what was inside.”
“You could have asked me.”
His mouth tightened.
“I’ve had thirty-seven blood tests, scans, cardiac evaluations, neurological studies, pulmonary studies, and machines downstairs worth more than most houses,” he said. “No one knows why I’m getting worse.”
I stayed silent.
“In eight weeks, I’ve slept through the night nine times.”
I already knew where this was going.
“All nine nights,” he said, “you worked this floor.”
The room seemed smaller.
“I checked the schedules.”
Of course he had.
“And you decided something I carry must be helping you?”
“What conclusion would you have drawn?”
“I would’ve asked whether I opened a door, moved a chair, turned something off, or cleaned differently.”
His gaze shifted toward the fireplace.
I followed it.
A white ceramic diffuser sat on the mantel, releasing a constant ribbon of scented vapor.
I walked over and switched it off.
Luca stared at me.
“You always do that.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The smell gives me a headache.”
“My doctor says it keeps the room sterile.”
“With vanilla?”
“Cedar compound.”
“It smells like a department store hiding a basement.”
One corner of his mouth nearly moved.
Then his breath caught painfully.
The humor vanished from me.
When he opened his eyes again, he looked impossibly young.
“Stay,” he whispered.
Something inside me twisted.
My mother had once breathed exactly like that.
“Hold me.”
“No.”
Luca blinked.
“I can pay you.”
My face hardened. “That makes it worse.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.”
I set the cloth down.
“You investigated my schedule, took something from my clothing without permission, sent it to a laboratory, and now you’re offering me money because you want my body closer to yours.”
His face went completely still.
“I’m dying.”
“That doesn’t make me yours.”
That was the first time I ever saw Luca Varelli look ashamed.
After a long silence, he lowered his eyes.
“Then tell me how to ask.”
For once, he actually waited.
Instead of answering, I walked to the tall window beside his bed.
It had been painted shut.
The paint near the lower frame had swollen into a soft bubble, and when I pressed it, the wood gave slightly beneath my fingertip.
“What is that?” Luca asked.
“I don’t know.”
Then I touched the wall behind his headboard.
The expensive wallpaper had lifted along one seam.
The plaster underneath felt cold.
Too cold.
“You sleep better when I’m here because I open the bathroom transom, leave the hallway door wider, and switch that diffuser off,” I said.
“My physician told everyone to keep the windows sealed.”
I pressed the swollen wall again.
“Who repaired the leak?”
Luca frowned.
“What leak?”
May you like
And suddenly, I wasn’t looking at a dying crime boss anymore.
I was looking at a man sleeping inches away from something hidden inside his own wall.
