Chapter 3 - SECRETS BURIED IN THE ASHES
The warmth of Dante’s thumb lingered on my skin long after he pulled away.
His eyes searched my face for any sign of a lie.
“You think I’m bluffing?” Dante asked, stepping back toward his desk.
“No,” I whispered. “I know you aren’t.”
“Then enlighten me.”
He poured two fingers of amber bourbon into a heavy crystal glass.
He didn't offer me any.
He didn't need to.
“I don't know Miss Bennett,” I said, crossing my arms defensively over my black-and-white uniform. “We move in entirely different worlds.”
Dante took a slow sip of his drink.
“Different worlds? Elena, my intelligence network knows the serial number of every shoe Vanessa owns. Yet her background check conveniently glossed over her association with a scholarship student from Northwestern who dropped out six years ago.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Northwestern.
Six years ago.
Before the fire that killed my father and left my mother paralyzed.
“How did you...?”
“I own this city, Elena,” Dante interrupted, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. “Nothing happens in Chicago without my knowledge. Especially not under my roof.”
He slammed the crystal glass down onto the oak desk.
Liquid splashed over the rim.
“Vanessa’s father, Richard Bennett, bought out a bankrupt medical research lab in 2020. The original patent holder died in a suspicious laboratory fire. His name was Thomas Carter.”
My knees buckled.
I grabbed the edge of a velvet armchair to keep from collapsing.
Thomas Carter.
My father.
The police had ruled it an electrical accident.
An unfortunate tragedy.
“My father’s work,” I choked out, tears finally breaking free. “They stole his research.”
“More than stolen,” Dante said, walking toward me with predatory grace. “They framed him for embezzlement to cover up the theft. The Bennett family made their first twenty million off your father’s medical patents.”
The room seemed to spin.
All the pieces clicked together with terrifying clarity.
Vanessa didn’t just hate me because I was a maid in her fiancé’s mansion.
She knew who I was.
She knew her family had destroyed mine.
And tonight, seeing me serve her champagne was her victory lap.
“And you?” I asked, my voice trembling with a mixture of grief and sudden, white-hot fury. “Why do you care, Dante? You’re marrying her. You’re sealing a two-hundred-million-dollar merger with the very people who murdered my father.”
Dante stopped right in front of me.
His chest rose and fell sharply.
“Marrying her?” Dante let out a cold, humorless laugh. “I’m not marrying Vanessa, Elena.”
I stared up at him.
“What?”
“The engagement announcement was a trap,” Dante said, his gaze locked onto mine. “To draw out the rats hiding in the Bennett syndicate. I needed Richard Bennett to feel safe. I needed him to lower his guard.”
“And Vanessa?”
“A pawn.”
Dante reached out, his fingers gently tangling into my hair, tilting my face upward.
“Just like you were supposed to be invisible staff.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I breathed, my heart hammering against his hand. “If your enemies find out you’re playing games with a maid... they’ll kill me.”
“Let them try,” Dante murmured, his face inches from mine. “Nobody touches what is mine.”
Before I could process his words, the heavy study door rattled violently.
Someone was trying the handle from the outside.
“Dante!” Vanessa’s shrill voice screamed through the wood. “Open this door right now! I know she’s in there!”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
He didn't take his eyes off me.
May you like
“Stay here,” he whispered.
He turned toward the door, his hand sliding inside his jacket, resting comfortably over the grip of a silenced pistol.
