Chapter 3 - The Sanctuary of Wolves
The master suite smelled of Italian bergamot, high-grade gun oil, and the dry, expensive heat of radiant-floor heating.
Claire sat on the edge of the low, charcoal-velvet settee at the foot of Adrian’s king-sized bed, her knees pressed together so tightly that the fabric of her flannel pants strained across her thighs. Her hands were tucked beneath her arms. She was still shivering, small, rhythmic tremors that made her teeth click together every few seconds.
The room was vast—larger than the entire ground floor of the house she had grown up in. A massive fireplace of black basalt dominated the far wall, its hearth cold and clean. Above the mantel hung no family portraits, no gold-framed religious icons, only a massive, minimalist canvas painted in shades of charcoal and lead-white.
On the nightstand, beside a glass carafe of water, lay the three hollow-point rounds Adrian had mentioned. They caught the ambient light from the terrace lamps outside, blunt and wicked.
The heavy oak door swung open with a soft, pneumatic hiss.
Adrian walked in. He had not taken the stairs; he had come through the private service corridor that connected his study to the lower security offices. He had changed out of his robe into a black cashmere sweater and dark wool trousers. His hair was damp, as if he had splashed cold water over his face, and his knuckles—she noticed with a fresh surge of dread—were red and swollen across the primary ridge.
He did not look at her immediately. He walked to the bar cabinet near the window, poured three fingers of amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a tumbler, and turned around.
"Drink this."
He held the glass out toward her.
Claire looked at the amber liquid, then at his hand. "I don't... I don't drink whiskey, Mr. Moretti."
"It isn't whiskey. It’s forty-year-old Armagnac," he said, his voice flat. "And right now, your shock is going to turn into peripheral collapse if you don't put sugar and alcohol into your bloodstream. Drink it, Claire. Don't make me tell you twice."
She reached out with both hands, taking the heavy crystal glass. Her fingers brushed his; his skin was dry, burning hot, while hers felt like refrigeration coils. She lifted the glass to her lips and took a small, burning sip.
The liquor hit the back of her throat like molten copper, followed by notes of plum, burnt caramel, and oak. She gasped, coughing into the crook of her elbow, her eyes watering afresh.
"All of it," he commanded quietly, leaning his hip against the corner of his mahogany desk.
She took another sip, then another, until half the glass was gone. A heavy, golden heat bloomed in the pit of her stomach, radiating outward into her frozen limbs, loosening the terrible, rigid tension that had locked her spine since two in the morning.
"Better?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered, looking down at the amber pool remaining in the glass. "Thank you."
Adrian watched her. His gaze was not the furtive, greasy assessment of Dean Russo, nor was it the dismissive glaze of the wealthy women who visited the estate for catered dinners. It was clinical, thorough, and entirely unhurried. He looked at the curve of her throat, where her pulse had finally slowed to an even rhythm. He looked at the soft, rounded swell of her breasts beneath the gray sweater, the way the fabric pulled tight against the fullness of her hips as she sat hunched on the velvet.
"Dean is in the carriage house," Adrian said.
Claire flinched. The crystal glass clicked against her ring. "Is he... did you...?"
"Marcus is speaking with him," Adrian replied, his voice devoid of inflection. "He has already confirmed what was on that slip of paper. He had the secondary key to your room. He also had four grams of pharmaceutical cocaine in his glove compartment and twelve thousand dollars in non-sequential hundreds that did not come from my payroll."
He set his own glass down on the desk with a sharp *clink*.
"Dean wasn't just planning to force himself on you, Claire."
She looked up, her pale blue eyes widening. "What?"
"Dean has debts," Adrian said, folding his arms across his broad chest. "Seven hundred thousand to a sportsbook run by the Castiglione family in Jersey. Do you know who the Castigliones are?"
"No," she breathed.
"They are people who have wanted my territory in the Brooklyn navy yard for six years," Adrian said. "Dean couldn't pay them. So he made an arrangement. He was going to use your quarters."
Claire’s head spun. The heat from the Armagnac suddenly felt sickly, suffocating. "My quarters? But... it’s just a bedroom. Next to the water heaters."
"Your bedroom shares an exterior wall with the old coal cellar," Adrian explained, his dark eyes never leaving her face. "The coal cellar has an emergency egress pipe that leads out through the seawall, directly to the Sound. It hasn't been used since 1928. It’s five feet below our primary perimeter motion sensors. To get inside this house without tripping the central breakers, an assault team needs that pipe open from the interior. And to open that pipe, they need to spend twenty minutes with a torch inside your closet."
The room seemed to tilt. Claire gripped the crystal glass until her fingers ached.
"He wasn't... he wasn't just coming for me," she whispered, the horror of it dawning on her with crushing weight.
"He was coming for both," Adrian said ruthlessly. "He wanted you because he is a weak, cowardly little dog who likes to hurt things that don't bite back. And he wanted to kill two birds with one stone. He was going to use your room to stage five Castiglione shooters at three o'clock tomorrow morning while I was asleep."
He stepped toward her. The floorboards didn't creak beneath his weight; he moved with the silence of a shadow on stone.
"If you had stayed in your bed tonight, Claire, you would have been dead by dawn. And so would I."
Claire looked up at him, her mouth slightly open. "I... I didn't know about any pipes. I swear, Mr. Moretti, I didn't know—"
"I know you didn't," Adrian interrupted. "If you had known, you would have run to the road. You wouldn't have brought an iron poker to my doorstep like a stray dog looking for a porch."
He stopped two feet in front of her. He looked down at her bare feet, which were still pale, tucked against the dark velvet of the settee.
"You slept on the stone," he murmured. "For four hours."
"Three hours and forty minutes," she corrected automatically, then immediately bit her lip, terrified she had spoken out of turn.
A faint, almost imperceptible twitch touched the corner of Adrian Moretti’s hard mouth. It wasn't a smile—men like Adrian did not smile—but it was an acknowledgment.
"You have bruises on your shins," he noted.
Claire quickly pulled the hem of her flannel pants down over her ankles, her face heating. "I bumped the baseboards when I lay down."
"You don't need to hide yourself from me, Claire."
The words were spoken without heat, but they hit her like an electric charge. She froze, her hands resting on her knees, her breath catching in her throat.
"I’ve seen what you look like when you work," Adrian continued, his voice dropping into that deep, resonant baritone that vibrated in her chest. "You spend half your day trying to make yourself look like a shadow. You pull your hair back until your scalp bleeds. You wear clothes three sizes too large so the men on the gate don't look at your hips."
Claire lowered her head, the shame burning hot behind her eyes. "I’m sorry, Mr. Moretti. I know I’m not... I know I don't fit the uniforms properly."
Adrian reached out.
His hand was large, the skin rough, scarred across the knuckle of his middle finger. He didn't grab her. He placed two fingers beneath her soft, rounded chin and lifted it.
His touch was not Dean’s. It wasn't hot and wet and demanding. It was firm, cool, and possessed an absolute, terrifying authority that made it impossible for her to look away.
"The uniforms are standard issue from an agency run by idiot Protestants," Adrian said, his dark eyes boring into hers with an intensity that made the room feel very small. "They are cut for coat hangers. You are not a coat hanger, Claire."
Her breath hitched. A tear escaped her left eye, running down her cheek until it touched the thumb he had rested against her jawline.
"From tonight," Adrian said, his voice dropping to a gravelly murmur, "you do not sleep in the basement. You do not clean the library shelves. You do not touch another copper pan in this house."
"Mr. Moretti... I have to work. I have debts—"
"Your mother’s debts in Wilkes-Barre were paid six weeks ago," he said smoothly.
Claire went dead still. "What?"
"Thirty-four thousand, two hundred and twelve dollars," Adrian said, his thumb brushing the tear from her cheek with a roughness that was strangely tender. "I bought the paper from the collection agency in Scranton. You don't owe them a cent."
Claire couldn't breathe. The room was spinning again, but this time it wasn't fear; it was vertigo. "Why? Why would you do that?"
"Because," Adrian said, stepping back and letting his hand drop, "I don't like my staff having allegiances to banks. And because I wanted to see if you would try to steal from me once you were clear."
"I would never steal from you!"
"I know," Adrian said. "You brought me an iron poker instead."
He turned toward the adjoining door that led to the private dressing suite and the guest bedroom beyond it.
"There is a bed in there. The sheets are linen. The door locks from the inside, but you will not turn that lock, Claire."
She blinked at his broad back. "Why?"
May you like
Adrian paused with his hand on the doorframe. He looked back over his shoulder, his dark eyes gleaming in the amber light of the corridor sconces.
"Because if someone tries to reach you now, they have to come through me," he said simply. "And I don't like people touching what belongs under my roof."
