Chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Past
The younger guard, whose name badge read Miller, swallowed hard. “Never like this. He gets migraines. Bad ones. He locks himself in to deal with them. He said if anyone broke that door down, they’d answer to him.”
“Well, he’s alive to answer,” Maeve said, smoothing back the damp dark hair from Adrian’s forehead. His skin felt like paper stretched over a furnace. Fever. Not just a simple neurological flare-up. Something systemic. Something he had been hiding behind heavy oak and silent corridors. “Get a cold cloth. And a bowl of water. Now.” Miller moved fast, clearly relieved to have an instruction that didn’t involve touching the boss or breaking estate rules. The older guard, Vance, stayed planted in the doorway, his eyes dark with a mixture of suspicion and lingering dread. “You shouldn’t have done that, Maeve.”
“I saved his life.”
“You don’t know what he was hiding in here. You don’t know what enemies he has.”
“Right now, he’s just a man who can’t breathe,” Maeve snapped. She looked around the dimly lit bedroom. Her gaze drifted to the nightstand where the silver-framed photograph lay facedown. The glass was cracked. She reached out and turned it over. A younger Adrian Vale stared back, standing beside a woman with dark hair and a cold, breathtaking smile. But it wasn’t the photo that made Maeve’s breath catch. Tucked behind the frame was a piece of heavy cream stationery with a red wax seal—a seal stamped with a serpent eating its tail.
The Chicago Syndicate’s inner circle. The old guard. The ones who had vanished five years ago in a bloody turf war that supposedly left Adrian standing alone at the top. Miller returned, breathless, carrying a silver basin sloshing with water and a folded linen towel. “Here. I got it from the guest bathroom down the hall.” Maeve took the towel, dipped it, and wrung it out before pressing it gently against the back of Adrian’s neck. A low groan escaped the boss’s lips. His eyes flickered open.
They weren’t black or brown, as people often whispered in the underworld; they were an icy, piercing gray, clouded now with pain and disorientation. He tried to sit up, his muscles bunching beneath his silk shirt. “Get… out.” His voice was a raw rasp, scraped raw by the seizure. “Mr. Vale, lie still,” Maeve commanded, her tone dropping into that unyielding register she used when unruly tenants or terrified children needed to understand she wasn’t asking.
Adrian froze. His gaze locked onto her face, tracking the gray housekeeping uniform, the broad shoulders, the smudge of dust on her cheek. For a terrifying second, Maeve thought he might reach for the small, heavy pistol tucked in the holster beneath his pillow. Instead, his hand curled into a fist against the carpet. “Who let you in?”
“No one,” Maeve said, dipping the cloth again. “I kicked the door in because you were dying on the floor like a dog while your trained guards stood outside playing statues.” Vance stiffened in the doorway, his hand twitching toward his sidearm. Adrian raised a single finger, stopping Vance dead in his tracks. The boss didn’t blink. He stared at Maeve with an intensity that could melt steel. “You broke my door.”
“I’ll buy a new lock out of my next paycheck. Now drink some water before you cramp up again.” She held a glass to his lips. He didn’t move for a long moment, suspicion warring with sheer physical exhaustion. Then, slowly, he tilted his head forward and drank, his gray eyes never leaving her face. When he finished, he sank back against the hardwood, breathing heavily. “Why didn’t you run?” he asked quietly.
“From what? A man having a seizure?” Maeve tossed the bloody towel into the basin. “I’ve seen worse, Mr. Vale. My brother had epilepsy. I spent half my childhood kicking doors down because people were too cowardly to help.” Adrian went completely still. The mention of her brother seemed to strike a chord behind those cold eyes, a brief flash of something ancient and heavy passing through his gaze. He slowly pushed himself up, leaning his back against the side of the bed. “You’re not just a cleaner, Ms. Kessler.”
“I clean the floors, Mr. Vale. That doesn’t mean I’m blind.” She stood up, brushing dust from her skirt. “Call your doctor. Or don’t. But if you drop dead on this floor tomorrow, make sure you do it earlier in my shift so I don’t have to ruin a good pair of shoes kicking your wood in again.” She turned on her heel and walked toward the ruined doorway, stepping past Vance without a backward glance. But as she reached the corridor, Adrian’s voice stopped her.
“Maeve.” She paused, looking back over her shoulder. The boss was sitting in the wreckage of his private sanctuary, looking smaller than he ever had, yet infinitely more dangerous. “Don’t clean this room tomorrow. Send someone else.”
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“Why? Ashamed of the mess?”
“No,” Adrian said softly, his eyes fixed on the cream envelope hidden behind the photograph. “Because someone is going to come looking for what was inside this room tonight, and I don’t want you caught in the crossfire.”
