Chapter 3 - Shadows Beneath the Archway
Winter melted into a biting, gray Chicago spring that chilled the stone corridors of the estate to the bone. By April, my position had quietly shifted from junior maid to something indefinable—half estate staff, half permanent fixture in Matteo’s inner orbit. Bruno rarely left my side, patrolling the perimeter of the cottage with a quiet, lethal grace that kept even the senior security guards at a respectful distance.
Yet, as my confidence grew, so did the hostility from the periphery.
Bianca Russo made no secret of her disdain. Whenever we crossed paths in the long art galleries or the formal gardens, her eyes would rake over my simple cotton dresses with undisguised venom. She belonged to Matteo’s world—a world of high-stakes galas, political alliances, and old-money families who smiled while sticking knives between your ribs.
One afternoon, I was carrying a stack of linen napkins through the east wing when Bianca stepped out from behind a marble pillar, blocking the corridor.
“You’re getting remarkably comfortable, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice dripping with sweet poison.
I tried to step around her. “Excuse me, Miss Russo. I have linens to deliver to the conservatory.”
“Do you really think a man like Matteo looks at you and sees a permanent fixture?” She laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “You’re a project, Clara. A stray dog he took in, much like the one currently chewing up your rag rug. The moment his real world catches up with him—the moment the families in Chicago realize he’s entertaining a broken-down domestic with a trailer-park divorce—you’ll be out on the highway with a cardboard box.”
My hands tightened around the linen stack, but I kept my chin up. “If Matteo has something to say to me, he usually knows where to find me.”
Her eyes narrowed into venomous slits. “You have no idea who he is, or what follows him around. Keep playing Cinderella, little maid. Twelve o’clock is coming.”
She brushed past me, her heavy perfume lingering like chemical smoke in the hallway.
I tried to shake off the encounter, telling myself she was just bitter and irrelevant. But that evening, an unsettling chill settled over the cottage. Bruno paced restlessly from the door to the window, letting out a low, muffled huff every few minutes, his hackles raised slightly along his spine.
Around 11:00 PM, a sharp rap echoed at the door. Not Matteo’s polite, measured knock, but a heavy, insistent pounding.
I reached for the deadbolt, half-expecting Matteo, but when I pulled the door open, the porch was completely empty.
A cold gust of wind swirled across the mat, carrying a single, heavy sheet of glossy photo paper that fluttered against my ankles.
Frowning, I bent down and picked it up.
My breath caught in my throat.
It was a high-resolution telephoto photograph taken from the treeline outside the cottage. In the image, I was sitting at my kitchen table, laughing as Matteo handed me a cup of coffee. But my face had been violently circled in thick, bleeding red marker.
With trembling fingers, I flipped the photograph over.
May you like
Scrawled across the back in jagged, block letters were six words that turned my blood to ice:
WE KNOW WHAT HIS DOG LOVES.....
