The bleeding maid begged the billionaire crime boss to open the cellar

The library was warm by the time Beatrice brought the tea tray in.

The fire had caught the dry oak logs Mateo had dragged up from the cellar, and the flames threw long, shivering bars of gold across the books—mostly heavy sets of nineteenth-century history and leather-bound volumes of Illinois supreme court reports that Leo used to press his grain-contracts flat.

Lily was sitting in the big red morocco armchair that had belonged to David Rossi. The chair was so large her small legs stuck straight out over the edge, the black patent-leather shoes she wore for lessons dangling two feet above the hearthrug. She was clutching the rabbit—its gray plush was worn down to the backing around the snout where she had sucked on it during her first month without her mother—and she wasn't crying. Lily never cried when Leo was in the room. She watched him the way a bird watches a hawk that has landed on its fence post: not with fear, exactly, but with the absolute, paralyzed knowledge that the world could change its mind about you in the space of a heartbeat.

Leo was kneeling on the rug beside her, holding a small porcelain saucer of weak tea with two drops of brandy in it.

"Drink it, princess," he was saying. His voice, which sounded like gravel rolling in an iron drum when he spoke to the men from the union, was soft now—almost thin, like paper that had been folded too many times. "Just the top. The brandy makes the chest stop whistling."

Lily took a sip, her dark eyes—so large they seemed to take up half her small, pale face—fixed on the fire. Then she looked past her father’s shoulder and saw Beatrice standing by the door with the tea tray.

"Bee," she whispered.

Leo looked around. His face, which had been set in those hard, gray lines that made people cross the street when they saw him coming down Wabash Avenue, softened just enough around the eyes to show the small, dry crow’s-feet he’d earned during the war.

"Set it down, Beatrice," he said. "And bring the extra blanket from the cedar chest in the hall. The wind’s coming off the lake through the sash."

"I brought the wool one," Beatrice said, stepping into the circle of firelight. She laid the heavy gray blanket over Lily’s small knees, tucking the edges in around her patent-leather shoes with the practiced, heavy movements of a woman who had spent half her life making beds that nobody thanked her for. "The one with the blue stitching. It doesn't scratch."

Lily’s small hand came out from under the rabbit’s ear and caught the corner of Beatrice’s white apron. The fingers were thin as willow switches, the skin translucent enough to show the blue veins at the wrist.

"Victoria went away," Lily said.

"Victoria had other business," Leo said, standing up with a slight crack in his left knee. He reached for his cigarettes on the mantelpiece, then stopped, his hand hovering over the silver box before he pulled it back empty. He hadn't smoked in front of Lily since she started wheezing in November. "She won't be back."

"She locked the door," Lily said to the fire. "She said the dark was good for my manners."

Leo didn't answer. He didn't have to. The way his shoulders shifted under his shirt was enough—the slow, heavy drop of a man who was calculating the weight of a debt he hadn't yet figured out how to pay.

Beatrice stayed kneeling beside the chair long after Leo had walked over to the window to look out at the sleet driving against the leaded glass. She adjusted the blanket, her large, red-rimmed hand looking clumsy against the fine wool, but her touch was steady.

"The kitchen’s got a pot of barley soup on the back burner," Beatrice said softly, her face close enough to Lily’s that she could smell the peppermint oil they’d rubbed on the child’s chest upstairs. "With little pieces of salt pork and carrots cut up small like dice. If you drink your tea, I’ll bring you a bowl before the tray goes down."

"Can I have the crusts?" Lily asked. "The hard ones from the end of the loaf?"

"If you chew them until they're soft," Beatrice said. "Not before."

Leo turned from the window. The sleet had turned to fat, wet flakes that stuck to the glass and blurred the lights of the carriage house across the drive.

"Beatrice," he said.

"Sir?"

"Get your things from the service wing."

Beatrice froze. Her hand was still resting on the corner of the blue-stitched blanket. The silence in the room suddenly grew very heavy, heavier than the books, heavier than the leaded glass.

"My things?" she said.

"Move them into the small room next to the nursery," Leo said, his voice dropping into that flat, unarguable register. "The one with the south window. Lily needs someone within twenty feet of her when the weather turns like this. You’re already up half the night with her anyway; you might as well save yourself the stairs."

Victoria’s voice seemed to echo from the dark corners of the library—You have a very large opinion of your place here, Miller.

Beatrice looked up at Leo. His face was in shadow, the firelight catching only the hard line of his jaw and the gray wing of hair above his left ear. He wasn't offering her a promotion. He was securing an asset. In Leo Rossi’s world, you put your guard dogs where the fence was lowest.

"The small room’s got a draft from the chimney," Beatrice said.

"I’ll have Mateo seal it with lead flashing tomorrow," Leo said. "Move your trunk after dinner."

He turned back to the window, dismissing her the way he dismissed the union delegates or the shipping agents—with a slight drop of his shoulder that meant the conversation had reached the bottom of the page.

Beatrice stood up slowly, her knees popping in the quiet room. She picked up the tea tray, her fingers white around the silver handles, and walked toward the door without looking at Lily again.

As she reached the heavy oak threshold, the child’s small voice piped up from the big red chair.

"Bee?"

"Yes, chick?"

"Does your room have a key?"

Beatrice stopped. She looked back over her shoulder at the two of them—the crime boss and his small, bird-boned daughter caught in the red glare of the coal fire, both of them waiting for an answer that would tell them whether they were still safe behind the stone walls of the bluff.