Chapter 3 - Blood on the Marble
By two in the morning, the Romano estate was not quiet.
Ethan had left Marco and four heavily armed perimeter guards stationed outside the ICU doors at St. Jude’s with strict orders: *If anyone unauthorized comes within ten yards of Clare Bennett, shoot through the floor, shoot through the ceiling, kill them where they stand.*
Now, Ethan walked through the front doors of his mansion. The double mahogany doors clicked shut behind him, the sound echoing through the cavernous foyer like a gunshot.
The staff was assembled.
Forty-two people stood in two neat lines in the grand hall: maids in pressed aprons, cooks in white jackets, drivers, groundskeepers, and the inner security detail. Not a single person looked up as their boss entered.
Margaret Vale stood at the head of the line, her hands clasped tightly over her stomach, her posture rigid, her chin trembling slightly.
Ethan walked down the center of the marble floor. He had not washed his hands; Clare’s dried blood was still visible under his fingernails and smeared across the white cuff of his right sleeve.
He stopped in front of Margaret.
“You knew,” Ethan said. It was not a question.
Margaret raised her head. For twenty-three years, she had served his father, and then him, with absolute, bowed deference. Tonight, her gaze did not waver.
“I knew she was sick, Mr. Romano,” Margaret said, her voice clear in the dead silence of the hall. “I did not know she was dying. Miss Clare forbade me from speaking to you.”
“I am the master of this house,” Ethan said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, low register that usually preceded an execution. “You answer to me. You protect my interests. When someone is bleeding under my roof, you inform me!”
“Protect your interests?” Margaret snapped, taking half a step forward, completely indifferent to the guards tensing behind Ethan. “Miss Clare was the only interest you had that was worth saving!”
A collective intake of breath swept through the ranks of the housekeepers.
“She took the blow for Arthur, the kitchen boy,” Margaret said, pointing a trembling finger toward an eighteen-year-old boy in the back row who was silently weeping. “Arthur’s brother died of an overdose in your clubs, Mr. Romano. Miss Clare bought that boy’s contract. She brought him here, fed him, taught him how to read balance sheets, and when a killer came through the garden, she stood between that boy and a bullet!”
Ethan turned slowly to look at Arthur. The boy shrank back, terrified, but nodded through his tears.
“She hid the bruising with linen bandages,” Margaret whispered, her fury breaking into cracked grief. “Every morning, I helped her wrap her ribs. Every morning, I begged her to tell you. Do you know what she told me, Ethan?”
It was the first time Margaret had called him by his first name since he was nine years old.
Ethan stood frozen.
“She said: *‘Ethan carries the lives of five hundred families on his back. If he knows someone breached the perimeter, he will spend the next three months hunting shadows instead of building his future. He doesn't need a sick girl whining about cracked ribs. He needs a home that doesn't demand anything from him.’*”
Margaret wiped a tear from her weathered cheek.
“She gave you an empire of peace, Mr. Romano. And when she asked you for five minutes to tell you that her body was breaking under the strain, you told the entire room to let her cry.”
The words struck the walls of the mansion and bounced back, stripping away the last shreds of Ethan’s arrogance.
He looked around the room. He saw the faces of the people who maintained his life. The driver whose mother’s chemotherapy was secretly paid for out of Clare’s checking account. The maid whose daughter had been enrolled in private school through Clare’s personal foundation. The head chef whose debts had been settled with the Marcone syndicate through Clare’s private negotiations.
They were not his people.
They were hers.
He was just the man who paid the utility bills and brought terror into their hallways.
“Pack your things,” Ethan said quietly.
Margaret blinked, stunned. “Sir?”
“Pack your things,” Ethan repeated, his voice cracking down the middle. “Arthur. Mrs. Higgins. All of you. Take three months’ advance salary from the safe. Take the cars. Go to the safehouse in Lake Placid.”
“Mr. Romano, we don't understand—”
“Voss knows she’s in the hospital,” Ethan said, pulling a Glock 19 from beneath his armpit and sliding a round into the chamber with a violent, metallic click. “He knows she’s the one who held the southern logistics network together. He thinks I am distracted. He thinks the Romano house is soft.”
Ethan looked toward the grand sweeping staircase Clare used to descend every evening, carrying fresh tea and an expectant, patient smile that he had routinely ignored.
May you like
“They are coming here tonight to take the ledgers,” Ethan whispered, his eyes turning to black ice. “And I want them to find only me.”
***