Chapter 4 - The Mark of a Traitor
By six in the morning, the rain had settled into a dense, gray sea mist that clung to the boxwood hedges and reduced the Long Island Sound to a flat, leaden mirror.
Claire sat in an armchair by the high window of the secondary suite, wrapped in a heavy, cream-colored robe that Adrian had retrieved from his private cedar press. It smelled of him—rich, dry, with that faint, metallic hint of gun oil and high-grade wool. It was enormous on her; the sleeves folded back three times over her wrists, and the hem pooled around her bare feet on the Persian rug.
She had not slept. She had tried, lying atop the impossibly soft goose-down mattress, but every time she closed her eyes, she heard the wet sound of Dean Russo’s voice in her ear: *Leave the latch up, fat girl.*
Then she would remember Adrian Moretti’s fingers beneath her chin, cool and heavy, and the cold dread would twist into something else entirely—a tight, fluttering ache low in her belly that terrified her far more than Dean’s threats.
A soft knock came at the interior door connecting her room to Adrian’s suite.
Claire sat up straight, pulling the lapels of the robe together at her throat. "Yes?"
The door swung open. It wasn't Adrian. It was Marcus.
Marcus was fifty, with graying crew-cut hair, a broken nose that had healed crooked, and the dead, polite eyes of a man who had retired from the Marine Corps only to find that the mafia offered better pension stability. He carried a silver tray with a porcelain pot of tea, two cups, and a plate of warm toast with marmalade.
"Morning, Miss Bennett," Marcus said, his tone perfectly normal, as if he weren't delivering breakfast to the house maid inside the don’s private quarters at sunrise.
"Marcus," Claire stammered, half-rising from the chair. "You... you don't have to do that. I can get it from the kitchen—"
"The kitchen is closed this morning," Marcus said, setting the tray down on the small walnut table beside her chair. "Mr. Moretti’s orders. Nobody goes into the service wing until the investigators from the city are finished."
Claire swallowed. "The investigators?"
Marcus poured the tea. It was Earl Grey, dark and fragrant. "The men who make sure things stay clean, Miss Bennett. You don't need to worry about them."
He looked at her, his face softening by perhaps two percent—an immense display of emotion for a man like Marcus.
"Dean’s car was found at the bottom of the old quarry in Oyster Bay about twenty minutes ago," Marcus added, his voice dropping slightly. "The local precinct has already logged it as an accidental runoff due to the slick roads. Very sad. Very tragic."
Claire’s breath hitched. She looked at Marcus’s hands; they were clean, but she knew what those hands had done between 3:30 and dawn.
"Is he...?"
"Dean is no longer a concern for this household," Marcus said firmly. "Nor are his friends at the gatehouse. Three of the night guards have been reassigned to our scrap operations in Newark. Permanently."
He pushed the teacup toward her.
"Drink your tea, Miss Bennett. The boss wants to see you in the study at eight. And wear the clothes in the wardrobe. He had Mrs. Gable bring them up from the city car an hour ago."
Marcus turned and walked toward the door. Before he left, he paused, his hand on the brass knob.
"You did good last night, kid," he said without looking back. "Most people run when they smell smoke. You brought the bucket. The boss doesn't forget that."
The door clicked shut.
Claire sat in silence for ten minutes, watching the steam rise from the porcelain cup. When her heart had stopped hammering against her ribs, she stood up and walked to the tall mahogany wardrobe on the east wall.
She pulled the doors open.
Inside, there were no black cotton aprons. There were no stiff, polyester trousers that chafed her inner thighs after eight hours of scrubbing baseboards.
Hanging on cedar hangers were three dresses.
The first was a heavy knit wool in deep hunter green, with a square neckline and long, fitted sleeves. The second was navy silk, fluid and heavy, with soft pleats at the waist designed to fall over wide hips without clinging. The third was a dark charcoal cashmere sweater with an A-line skirt made of buttery, Italian lambskin.
May you like
On the floor beneath them sat two pairs of shoes—soft, calfskin loafers and low-heeled leather boots from a shop on Madison Avenue that Claire had only ever seen from the outside through bus windows.
She reached
