Chapter 3 - Reckoning
The living room of the Rossi mansion had never felt so suffocating.
Leo sat in the heavy leather armchair behind his mahogany desk. Victoria was brought into the center of the room by two of Leo's largest men. Her hair was disheveled, her expensive silk dress torn at the hem, and the air of aristocratic superiority she had worn like armor was completely shattered.
Beatrice sat nearby on a plush sofa, a warm blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She held Lily, who had refused to let go of her neck since being brought up from the cellar. A doctor, brought in through the side entrance, had already treated the child's throat and Beatrice's face, placing a neat strip of butterfly bandages over the maid's cheekbone.
"Leo, please," Victoria wept, her mascara running in dark streaks down her face. "You have to understand! I was trying to discipline her! She was being unruly, and that maid—that wretched woman—instigated everything! She threw herself at me!"
Leo didn't speak immediately. He took a long drag from a cigar, the blue smoke curling toward the high ceiling. When he finally looked up, his dark eyes were empty of any human warmth.
"You lied to me," Leo said softly. The tone was worse than if he had screamed. "You told me you cared for my daughter. You told me you wanted to build a family."
"I do! I love you, Leo!"
"You locked a six-year-old child with severe asthma in a subterranean vault," Leo said, leaning forward. "And you struck the only person in this house who actually protected her."
Leo motioned to Mateo, who stepped forward holding a black leather folder. Mateo tossed it onto the desk in front of Leo.
"We ran the full check you asked for last week, Boss," Mateo said calmly. "Victoria Kensington isn't in debt to her father's estate. She's in debt to the Moretti family. Three million dollars in gambling debts in Las Vegas. She promised them full access to our shipping docks in exchange for wiping her ledger clean the day after the wedding."
Victoria went completely white. She stopped crying. The illusion was entirely broken.
"You were never going to be my wife," Leo said, his voice flat. "You were an infection. And I remove infections."
Victoria dropped to her knees, genuinely terrified now. "Leo... please. Don't kill me. I'll leave! I'll go back to Europe, you'll never see me again!"
Leo looked over at Beatrice. Beatrice flinched slightly at the cold edge in his posture, but she didn't look away.
"Beatrice," Leo called out quietly.
She cleared her throat, holding Lily a little tighter. "Yes, Mr. Rossi?"
"What should I do with her?"
The room went dead silent. The guards shifted slightly. Victoria looked up at Beatrice with eyes wide with panic, the former socialite now at the absolute mercy of the maid she had called 'aesthetically offensive' only hours earlier.
Beatrice looked down at Lily, who was fast asleep, exhausted from the trauma. Then she looked back at Victoria.
"She doesn't deserve to be in this house," Beatrice said, her voice steady despite her heart pounding in her chest. "She doesn't deserve your name, or your power. But killing her won't erase what she did to Lily. Let her live with her debts. Strip her of everything, take her family's name down, and throw her out into the cold. Let her see what it’s like to have nothing."
Leo stared at Beatrice for a long, silent moment. A rare, almost imperceptible tilt of his lips appeared beneath his dark stubble.
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"You heard her," Leo told Mateo. "Take her jewels. Strip her accounts. Drop her off on the curb in the worst district in New York with twenty dollars in her pocket. If she ever steps foot in Illinois again... feed her to the river."
Victoria was dragged out screaming, her cries fading into the vast corridors of the estate until the heavy oak front doors slammed shut.
