Chapter 2 - The Hallway of Echoes
Lily did not answer immediately. She curled her small fingers into her palms, hiding the tiny drops of blood from view as if she could erase what had happened by concealing it.
"She went to the big gate," Lily whispered, her voice barely carrying over the soft hum of the mansion's climate control. "The man with the loud paper came."
Damian frowned. The Russo estate didn't deal with "loud paper." Process servers, debt collectors, and unwelcome visitors were intercepted a mile down the private drive at the security lodge. If someone had reached the main gate—let alone triggered a reaction from Claire—something had broken down in the protocol he had established.
He reached out, his large hand dwarfing the tiny, fragile wrist of the child. Gently, he turned her hand over, inspecting the puncture wounds. A drop of crimson had welled up beside her cuticle. Without thinking, Damian pulled a pristine, monogrammed linen handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it softly against her skin.
"Don't move," he instructed, his tone dropping into the measured cadence he used in corporate boardrooms when a multi-million-dollar acquisition was hanging by a thread.
Lily froze, her wide eyes locked onto his face. She didn't cry. That was what haunted Damian the most. A normal three-year-old would have wailed, thrown a tantrum, or sought immediate comfort. Lily simply endured, waiting for the shoe to drop.
Damian stood up, the white shirt sliding from her lap. He picked it up, inspected the agonizingly bad needlework, and laid it across the back of his chair.
"Stay here, Lily," he said, turning toward the doorway. "Do not touch the needle again."
He walked down the long, mahogany-paneled hallway of the east wing. The silence of the estate felt different now—heavy, suffocating, and charged with an underlying tension. As he approached the service stairs leading down to the ground floor and the courtyard exit, he heard voices.
One voice was crisp, terrified, and shaking. Claire Bennett.
The other voice belonged to Marcus Vance, one of Damian's regional logistics directors—or at least, he was supposed to be.
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"I don't care about your schedule, Claire," Vance's voice sneered up the stairwell. "Mr. Russo's properties are not a charity ward. If you can't pay the arrears on your late husband's equipment loans, the interest compounds. And a mother with a toddler working as a maid? Let's just say corporate compliance would love to know how many estate resources you're draining."
Damian stopped at the top of the landing, his shadow stretching down the stairs like a blade.
