Chapter 1 - THE FORBIDDEN PHONEThe first time Beatrice Miller touched the forbidden phone, she knew a man like Leo Rossi could make her disappear before sunrise.
She pressed the red button anyway.
Her cheek was bleeding. Three fingers on her right hand were swelling purple. Every breath scraped through her chest as though she had swallowed broken glass. Somewhere beneath the mansion, behind an iron door in the coldest part of the wine cellar, six-year-old Lily Rossi was running out of air.
Beatrice stood inside Leo Rossi’s private office, staring at the shattered oak door behind her.
No employee was permitted in that room without Leo’s personal invitation. Even his armed guards stopped outside. The office contained business records, private ledgers, coded documents, and secrets powerful men had died trying to uncover.
Beatrice had broken into it with her shoulder.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
Then a voice colder than the Chicago winter answered.
“Speak.”
Beatrice almost forgot her name.
“Mr. Rossi,” she gasped. “It’s Beatrice. The maid.”
The silence on the other end changed. It became sharper.
“You have ten seconds to explain why you’re using that line.”
Leo Rossi was in Miami—or that was what everyone in the mansion believed. He owned construction companies, trucking routes, restaurants, warehouses, and enough city secrets to make judges lower their voices when they mentioned him.
The newspapers called him an entrepreneur.
The police called him a person of interest.
Everyone who wanted to stay alive called him Mr. Rossi.
“Please come home,” Beatrice whispered.
“Why?”
“Victoria locked Lily in the wine cellar.”
Nothing moved in the room except the blood sliding down Beatrice’s jaw.
“She’s having an asthma attack,” Beatrice continued. “Victoria took her inhaler. I tried to stop her, but she hit me and fired me. The cellar door is locked, and Lily can barely answer me.”
Leo’s voice dropped lower.
“Where is Victoria?”
“Downstairs.”
“And where are you?”
“In your office.”
“Leave it. Go to the cellar door. Speak to Lily. Keep her awake.”
“But you’re in Miami.”
“Beatrice.”
The way he said her name stopped her cold.
“Go.”
The line went dead.
Beatrice stared at the receiver. Miami was three hours away by air. Lily might not have three minutes.
She ran.
No one ran through the Rossi mansion. Staff members moved silently. Guards walked with controlled purpose. Guests crossed the marble halls slowly because rushing looked cheap.
But Beatrice thundered down the staircase in her torn black uniform, gripping the banister with her good hand.
At twenty-eight, she had spent most of her life apologizing for taking up space.
She was broad-shouldered, soft around the waist, and heavier than the polished women who attended parties at the Rossi estate. Her uniform pulled tightly across her hips. Cruel guests whispered when she entered rooms. Some did not bother whispering.
Victoria Kensington had been the worst.
“Move, Beatrice,” Victoria had once said in front of a room full of guests. “You’re blocking the entire hallway.”
People laughed.
Beatrice lowered her eyes because rent was due, her mother needed medication, and women without degrees or powerful families did not easily find jobs that paid what the Rossi household paid.
But Lily had never laughed.
Lily had been five when Beatrice first came to the mansion. The child had recently lost her mother in a car explosion that the newspapers called an accident. After the funeral, Lily stopped speaking to almost everyone.
She hid behind velvet curtains with a stuffed rabbit missing one ear.
Then Beatrice found her.
Instead of dragging the child out, Beatrice sat on the floor and told her a story about a rabbit that survived a storm by hiding beneath the roots of an old oak tree.
Lily slowly emerged.
After that, she followed Beatrice everywhere.
Beatrice made her vanilla shortbread. She read to her during thunderstorms. She learned the warning signs of Lily’s asthma attacks—the fluttering hand, the widening eyes, the frightened effort to pull air into her small lungs.
Two days before leaving for Miami, Leo had paused in the foyer and looked directly at Beatrice.
“Keep an eye on my daughter.”
“Always, Mr. Rossi.”
She had meant it.
What Leo had not understood was that the danger was already living under his roof.
Victoria Kensington had arrived with twelve designer suitcases and an engagement ring large enough to blind the household staff. Her father controlled port contracts along the East Coast, and her marriage to Leo would unite two powerful families.
In front of Leo, Victoria kissed Lily’s forehead and called her sweetheart.
When Leo left the room, her smile disappeared.
She pinched Lily’s arm where clothing would hide the mark.
She tore up the child’s drawings.
She whispered that Leo wanted a new family without a sad little girl ruining everything.
Beatrice saw the changes. Lily stopped eating. She startled at footsteps. She began hiding food beneath her pillow as though preparing to run away.
Then Leo left for Miami.
By nine that morning, Victoria had dismissed almost every employee.
“I want privacy,” she announced.
She kept Beatrice.
“Someone has to scrub the floors,” Victoria said. “And the exercise might finally do you some good.”
At noon, Beatrice heard paper ripping.
She entered the living room and found Victoria tearing apart Lily’s sketchbook. Pages covered in crayon flowers and crooked hearts drifted onto the rug.
“That was for Daddy,” Lily whispered.
Victoria smiled.
“Your father doesn’t care about ugly little pictures. He cares about peace. You ruin that every time you enter a room.”
Beatrice stepped forward.
“I’ll clean it, Miss Kensington. Please give the book back.”
Victoria slowly turned.
“Did the furniture just speak?”
Beatrice’s hands tightened.
“Lily hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Victoria crossed the room and struck Beatrice across the face with the back of her hand.
“You are a maid. You do not correct me.”
Lily screamed.
That was when Victoria noticed the inhaler clutched in the child’s hand.
She snatched it.
“You always use this thing to get attention.”
“Please,” Lily whispered. “I need it.”
Victoria grabbed the child’s wrist and dragged her toward the basement stairs.
Beatrice lunged forward, but Victoria shoved her into a glass cabinet. Crystal shattered. Beatrice fell hard, cutting her cheek and crushing three fingers beneath her body.
By the time she stood, Victoria had locked Lily behind the wine-cellar door.
“You’re fired,” Victoria said. “Get out before I call security.”
Then Lily began coughing.
Beatrice begged for the key.
Victoria poured herself champagne.
Beatrice tried to wrestle it from her hand, but Victoria struck her again and ordered the remaining guard to remove her.
The guard hesitated when he heard Lily’s coughing through the cellar door.
Victoria looked him directly in the eyes.
“Mr. Rossi authorized everything.”
The guard stepped back.
That was when Beatrice ran upstairs and broke into the office.
Now she reached the cellar corridor again and dropped to her knees beside the iron door.
“Lily?” she called. “Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
A faint tapping answered.
Beatrice pressed her ear against the metal.
“Stay with me. Remember the rabbit under the oak tree?”
Another weak tap.
“That rabbit was scared too,” Beatrice said, fighting tears. “But it kept breathing. Slowly. Just like we practiced.”
Behind her, heels clicked against the stone floor.
Victoria appeared at the end of the corridor with a glass of champagne in one hand and Lily’s inhaler in the other.
“You should have left when I gave you the chance.”
“Give me the key.”
Victoria smiled.
“No.”
Beatrice slowly stood.
“You’re going to kill her.”
“I’m going to teach her that tantrums have consequences.”
“That isn’t a tantrum.”
Victoria raised the inhaler and turned it between her fingers.
“You think Leo will believe you? A desperate maid who broke into his office? By the time he comes back, I’ll tell him you locked Lily down there yourself.”
A sound came from behind the cellar door.
Not coughing.
Silence.
Beatrice’s heart stopped.
“Lily?”
No answer.
Beatrice struck the iron door with both hands.
“Lily!”
Victoria took a slow sip of champagne.
Then the mansion lights went out.
The corridor fell into darkness.
A second later, every exterior door slammed shut automatically.
Victoria’s smile vanished.
From somewhere above them came the unmistakable sound of men entering the house.
Heavy footsteps crossed the marble foyer.
The emergency lights flickered red.
Victoria backed away from the cellar.
“That’s impossible.”
A man’s voice answered from the darkness behind her.
“No, Victoria.”
May you like
Leo Rossi stepped into the red light, his black coat wet with rain, his expression completely empty.
“I came home early.”
