Chapter 1 - The Glass on the Nightstand
Dominic Moretti had just humiliated everyone in the room by insisting a bullet wound couldn’t make him feel pain, but I was the maid reckless enough to expose his lie. Then I noticed something in his water, and suddenly the terrifying mafia boss wasn’t shaking because of me at all.
I’d worked in the sprawling, cavernous Moretti mansion for seventeen days, which apparently was long enough to forget that most people in Chicago were deeply, profoundly terrified of Dominic.
He sat propped against a mountain of plush silk pillows, his black linen shirt hanging unbuttoned around the thick white bandages covering his left shoulder and chest. He was pale from severe blood loss, bruised in dark purple rings along his ribs, and still somehow intimidating enough to silence five heavily armed men with a single, slow glance.
“I feel nothing,” he said. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that sounded like iron dragging across gravel. “It’s a scratch.”
I stared at the broad, calloused hand resting beside his thigh on the dark sheet.
It trembled.
Just once—a tiny, involuntary micro-spasm that lasted less than a second. But I saw it.
I stepped right up to the side of the bed, reaching out without asking permission. I placed my palm flat against his broad chest, right above his heart, feeling his pulse quicken instantly beneath my warm fingers.
“Nothing?” I asked, tilting my head.
“Nothing,” he gritted out, staring straight up into my eyes.
Behind me, Raphael, his underboss and oldest friend, was already fighting a smile, lowering his head to hide his face.
I leaned closer, bringing my lips just inches from Dominic’s sharp jawline.
Dominic’s dark eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “Lucy.”
That single-word warning had probably terrified high-ranking mobsters and federal agents across half the city. It had sent grown men running for their lives.
Unfortunately for him, I changed bedsheets, scrubbed marble floors, and emptied trash bins for a living. I was far too tired to be properly terrified.
I lowered my voice right beside his ear. “Then why are you shaking?”
Silence swallowed the grand master suite whole.
One of the broad-shouldered bodyguards near the heavy mahogany doors coughed awkwardly into his fist. Raphael completely turned toward the window because his broad shoulders were shaking violently with suppressed, silent laughter.
Dominic stared at me with the precise expression of a powerful man deciding whether firing me on the spot would be punishment enough for such sheer audacity.
“It’s the injury,” he growled, his jaw tightening so hard the muscle twitched.
I gasped theatrically, pressing a hand to my chest. “The injury you can’t feel?”
Raphael lost the battle entirely. A loud, snorting laugh escaped his chest before he quickly choked it back down.
For half a second, the corner of Dominic’s mouth twitched, as if he almost wanted to smile.
Then his face suddenly twisted in subtle agony.
The change was microscopic, but because my hand was still resting on his chest, I felt his entire upper body lock up like steel.
Real pain. Unbearable pain.
His hand on the bed suddenly shook harder, his fingers clutching at the silk sheet.
“Dominic?” I whispered, my playful tone vanishing in an instant.
“I’m fine,” he choked out, forcing his breath out through his nose.
He reached for the crystal glass of water resting on the polished nightstand beside his bed, but the heavy glass rattled violently between his trembling fingers as soon as he lifted it.
Nobody was laughing now. Raphael spun back around from the window, his playful mood instantly evaporating, his hand dropping straight to the leather holster under his jacket.
I reached out and caught the crystal glass before it slipped from Dominic’s unstable grip.
“Let me help,” I said softly.
Dominic’s dark eyes met mine. Something intensely vulnerable appeared in their depths—a brief, terrifying glimpse of human frailty that I never expected to see in a man like Dominic Moretti.
Then, astonishingly, he let go of the glass and let me hold it for him.
I lifted the crystal toward his pale lips.
And stopped.
The heavy bedroom light hit the water at a sharp angle. There was something strangely cloudy settling near the bottom of the crystal. A pale, milky residue swirled lazily through the clear liquid, clinging to the inside of the glass.
My stomach tightened into a hard, cold knot.
“Did you put something in this?” I asked, pulling the glass back slightly.
Dominic frowned, his dark brows drawing together. “No.”
“Is this your oral pain medication?”
“No. Dr. Ferraro hasn't given me liquid meds.”
I spun around toward the corner of the room where the family physician was preparing a fresh roll of bandages. “Dr. Ferraro! Come here. Right now.”
The silver-haired doctor hurried over, his brow furrowed in confusion. I handed him the crystal glass. The moment he held it up to the light and smelled the faint, chemical odor drifting from the rim, every single trace of warmth disappeared from the doctor's face.
“Did you drink from this glass, Dominic?” Ferraro demanded, his voice turning sharp and deadly serious.
Dominic nodded slowly, his breathing becoming shallow. “A few sips. This morning around eight.”
“How much?”
“Not much. Half a glass.”
I looked over at the untouched medication tray resting on the dresser across the room. Every paper packet of heavy painkillers was still completely sealed.
A cold, horrifying realization crawled through my veins like ice water.
His trembling wasn’t from muscle weakness. It wasn’t from shock. It might not even have been from the gunshot wound he’d sustained two nights ago at the docks.
Someone was poisoning him. Someone was lacing his water with an organ-damaging toxin while he lay flat on his back recovering from an ambush.
Dominic stared at the cloudy glass in Dr. Ferraro’s hand, and in the span of a single heartbeat, the vulnerable, wounded man I’d been playfully teasing completely vanished.
What remained sitting in that bed was the cold, merciless kingpin that Chicago feared.
His voice became terrifyingly, unnaturally calm. “Lock the floor.”
Raphael moved instantly, pulling a tactical radio from his belt before I could even draw a breath. “Code Red in the primary residence. Seal all exits on the third floor. Nobody enters, nobody leaves. I want every security feed locked down right now.”
The two bodyguards at the door slammed the heavy double oak doors shut, throwing the massive iron deadbolts into place.
And as I stood beside Dominic’s bed, looking down at his dark, murderous eyes while holding the poisoned glass between my trembling hands, one chilling thought hit me harder than anything else.
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Only a handful of inner-circle people had security clearance to step foot into this private master suite.
Which meant whoever wanted Dominic Moretti dead was already inside the mansion—and standing among us right now.
